Assistant Professor in IMB at NYU and Mentor and Consultant in Design and Innovation.
When a mountain biking accident ended his career in the military and left him confined to a wheelchair Noel went back to eduction to study Industrial design. He went on to utilise his new found skill set to become an entrepreneur bringing to life a number of small hardware based startups.
Travelling to and working in Shenzhen, China he subsequently went on to become head of design at HAX a hardware startup accelerator where he worked with over 200 startups in the areas of robotics, medical devices, consumer products as well as many more industries taking into account the business needs of these startups as well as their design needs.
An advocate of design as a problem solving activity and a keen interest in creating solutions to difficulties around many issues, Noel utilizes his unique prism of living both with and without a disability to create solutions to complex problems.
Returning to the sport of mountain biking Noel has developed an open source adaptive mountain bike for wheelchair users as part of his research at NYU. He has built and ridden adaptive mountain bikes worldwide as part of his work. He is pioneering the sport of adaptive mountain biking in Ireland by working with Cycling Ireland and other organisations.
