Education: the Model School, Limerick, St Clement's College, Limerick; BSc in chemistry, UCG; researcher (cancer drugs) at Imperial College London and State University of New York at Buffalo; honorary doctorate from NUI Cork, 1999.
Employment: long service with Cork IT and its forerunners. He started teaching chemistry at Crawford Municipal Technical Institute in 1963; head of department, then head of school, appointed principal at Cork RTC; director of Cork IT since 1993.
Family: married to Sheila, retired national school teacher; children: Liam and Eileen are both software engineers while Feargal is a doctor in Beaumont hospital, Dublin.
Most proud of: "a sense of reasonableness between staff and students. A sense of community. We have tried to create a college with a human face although this has grown harder with the explosion in numbers. We have good sports facilities. We try to achieve good academic and recreational standards."
Biggest headache: overcrowding on campus with 50 prefabricated buildings.
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