Award-winning technology, innovation and creativity executive Domhnaill Hernon will present a lecture, entitled “Fiddle Strings, Airplane Wings and Humanizing Technology,” on Friday, December 6 at 4:30 p.m. in the James Stewart Film Theater at 185 Nassau Street on the Princeton University campus. Part of the 2019-2020 Fund for Irish Studies series at Princeton University, this event is free and open to the public.

Award-winning technology, innovation and creativity executive Domhnaill Hernon. Photo courtesy of Domhnaill Hernon

Hernon received an undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Aerodynamics from the University of Limerick and an executive M.B.A. from Dublin City University, Ireland. He previously led research organizations and developed and executed strategies to overcome the “innovation valley of death.” He is currently Head of Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) at Nokia Bell Labs, which is a new initiative he founded to fuse art and engineering/science to develop solutions that humanize technology. His work has been featured in Wired Magazine, Times Square, SXSW, Nasdaq, MWC and Inspirefest, to name just a few, and he advises cultural programs globally.

Hernon will share some of his personal history, discuss the merits of fusing art and technology, play some tunes, and talk about Irish tradition in music, particularly from his native County Sligo, Ireland.

The Fund for Irish Studies affords all Princeton students, and the community at large, a wider and deeper sense of the languages, literatures, drama, visual arts, history, politics, and economics not only of Ireland but of “Ireland in the world.” The series is co-produced by the Lewis Center for the Arts and the fall 2019 edition of the series is organized by Paul Muldoon, Princeton’s Howard G.B. Clark ’21 University Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Creative Writing, Director of the Princeton Atelier, and Acting Chair of the Fund for Irish Studies.

Information about the Fund for Irish Studies series events can be found at fis.princeton.edu. Other upcoming events in the current series include: 

• A reading by award-winning poet Hannah Sullivan on March 6
• A reading by award-winning fiction writer Kevin Barry on April 2, cosponsored with Special Collections at Princeton University Library
• A lecture by Laurence Cox on his new book, The Irish Buddhist: the Forgotten Monk who Faced Down the British Empire, written with Alicia Turner and Brian Bocking, on April 17.

The Fund for Irish Studies is generously sponsored by the Durkin Family Trust and the James J. Kerrigan, Jr. ’45 and Margaret M. Kerrigan Fund for Irish Studies. 

To learn more about the more than 100 public performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts, lectures and special events, most of them free, presented each year by the Lewis Center for the Arts, visit arts.princeton.edu.