John McCanny has made pioneering contributions to research on special purpose silicon architectures for digital signal and video processing, and for cryptography. He has published 5 research books, 360 peer-reviewed research papers and holds over 20 patents.

He was responsible for the vision that led to the creation of the Northern Ireland Science Park (now 160 companies) and its £37M research flagship, the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT). He also led the initiative that created the (now) £65M Centre for Secure Information Technology, the UK’s Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Cybersecurity.

His awards include a Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal (1996), an IEEE Millennium Medal, the Royal Dublin Society/Irish Times Boyle Medal (2004), the IET Faraday Medal (2006), the Royal Irish Academy’s Cunningham Medal (2011) and the Irish Academy of Engineering’s Parson Medal (2018). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Irish Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy.

He has co-founded two successful high technology companies based on the work of his research teams: Amphion Semiconductor, later acquired by Conexant; and Audio Processing Technology, later acquired by Cambridge Silicon Radio - now part of Qualcomm.

In 2004, he received a CBE for “Contributions to Engineering and Higher Education” and in 2017, he received a Knighthood for “Contributions to Higher Education and Economic Development”.