Chris Horn

Christopher J. Horn is an Irish academic and businessperson, co-founder and CEO of Ireland's first NASDAQ-listed company, IONA Technologies, once one of the world's top ten software-only companies by revenue. He also led fundraising for, and became founding chairperson of, Dublin's Science Gallery, and later its international spinoff projects. Horn, an electronics engineer and holder of a PhD in computer science, has also written extensively on technology and business innovation, and on privacy, including for The Irish Times. A former president of Engineers Ireland, and later made a Fellow of that body, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Trinity College Dublin, and a Gold Medal of the Royal Dublin Society. He has been chairperson or member of multiple commercial and voluntary boards, including those of Trinity College Dublin and Science Foundation Ireland.

Early life and education Christopher J. Horn was born in the UK and his family moved to Bray, County Wicklow when he was very young. He grew up in Blackrock, Dublin, attending the local Newpark Comprehensive School. His first job was as an attendant at the Butlin's Mosney holiday camp north of Dublin.

Career Academic career Horn was hired as a junior lecturer at TCD in 1979, working on a new BA moderatorship in Computer Science.

IONA In 1981 Horn had visited Stanford University, where he met Andy Bechtolsheim, inventor of the Stanford University Network (SUN) workstation, and Bill Joy, and when they later went on to co-found Sun Microsystems, he began to talk to fellow academics about starting their own venture. Eventually, in 1991, Horn, Sean Baker and Annrai O’Toole, all then academics in the Department of Computer Science at TCD, put in each to found IONA Technologies. achieving the fifth largest debut on that exchange to date.

Horn stepped down from the CEO role in 2000, but remained as a non-executive director; he returned to the CEO role from 2003 to 2005, after the "dotcom crash". received a further payout of around when the company was finally sold in 2008.

After IONA Horn invested in a search and advertising technology provider, Sophia (sold to Boxfish), Nomos Software and a data storage enterprise, Gridstore (later Hypergrid), among others. He was also a member of the board of Irish State agency Science Foundation Ireland.

Other roles Horn chaired the Irish Management Institute (IMI), and was the founding chairperson of the Ireland China Business Association. He was chairperson of UNICEF Ireland for several years, working with CEO Melanie Verwoerd. returning to the topic of technology-based risks to human rights defenders in 2021.

In January 2013 Horn took on the chairmanship of Northern Ireland Science Park Connect, a program which aimed to support early-stage and "wantrepreneur" businesses, a role he held until 2016. He has been a judge for the Irish Times Innovation Awards since 2013, a role he still held as of 2021. and is and has been a member of multiple other boards and award committees. and a Whitaker Award from the Irish Academy of Management in 2019.

Publication Aside from his columns for The Irish Times, and blog, Horn edited a book, Professor John Byrne: Reminiscences: Father of Computing in Ireland about John Gabriel Byrne, a pioneering TCD professor and researcher in computer science. In 1998, he bought an historic Georgian house, Askefield, the former rectory of the Church of Ireland in southern Shankill, then the home of journalist and politician Shane Ross, on 6 acres, for over ,

Jointly with technology journalist Karlin Lillington, he has been a senior sponsor of the Irish National Opera since its launch year. As of 2021, he was married to Lillington.