After receiving scholarships from the O'Reilly Foundation and the Irish Fulbright Commission, Anita Sands of Drogheda, County Louth, Ireland, selected Carnegie Mellon's Heinz School to study public policy.

She's the first of seven O'Reilly Foundation scholars to choose public policy and Pittsburgh.

"My decision to come to Carnegie Mellon was greatly influenced by Sir Anthony O'Reilly and his wife, Lady Chryss O'Reilly, who told me how great Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon were-and they were right," said Sands, a graduate of Queens University of Belfast, Northern Ireland.

O'Reilly, former chairman and chief executive officer of the Pittsburgh-based H.J. Heinz Co., established the O'Reilly Foundation as a charitable foundation in 1998. The found-ation supports a variety of creative endeavors to benefit Ireland and to promote excellence, global vision, community responsibility and leadership. The foundation selects scholars they believe will make a significant contribution to the social, cultural or economic development of Ireland.

Sands, the former All-Ireland public speaking champion, has undergraduate degrees in physics and applied mathematics and a Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics. She conducted her doctoral research at the United Kingdom Central Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory in Daresbury. She also is an accomplished musician and a graduate of the London College of Music in piano.

"We take pride in attracting the best and brightest students at the Heinz School and Anita Sands represents all the scholarly qualities we strive for here at one of the nation's most technologically advanced universities," said Heinz School Dean Jeffrey Hunker.

Six other O'Reilly scholars have studied at Cornell University, the University of California at Berkeley, the Royal College of Music in London, Yale University, the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia and Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Sands said the Heinz School curriculum and internationally renowned faculty were also a big draw when she began searching for educational institutions overseas.

"I was intrigued by the combination of public policy and information technology courses at the Heinz School and thought it would be a great match given my background and interests," she said.

Her desire to study public policy dovetails nicely with her work at Carnegie Mellon's Software Industry Center, where she is researching the role entrepreneurship plays in the Irish software industry. Sands surveyed more than 60 companies in Ireland this summer and returned home last month to interview more Irish software industry leaders.

The software industry has been the cornerstone of phenomenal growth of the Irish "Celtic Tiger" economy in recent years. Ireland is Europe's leading software hub and just recently outpaced the United States as the world's largest exporter of software.

The Irish software industry now comprises more than 900 international and indigenous firms, employing more than 30,000 people with turnover in excess of $10 billion. More than 1,200 multinational corporations have established operations in Ireland, including top software companies such as Oracle, IBM, SAP and Sun Microsystems. With its export-led economy, Ireland provides these companies with a competitive business location and access to 400 million consumers in the European Union.

"That sector is a real growth engine for Ireland and many global economies, so I think my study may highlight important new trends in a sector destined to provide jobs and research challenges for the next decade," Sands said.

Sands, the eldest of five siblings, also is collaborating with Danny Breznitz, a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Industry Performance Center and MIT Media Lab Europe. Breznitz and Sands are working on an academic paper tracking the different paths technology companies in Israel and Ireland take.

Her Irish roots also have come in handy as she works with Carnegie Mellon Professor Ashish Arora, who is writing a book about information, technology and growth in emerging regions in the international software industry. She will author the chapter on the Irish software industry.

"It has been fascinating to see how and why the software industry is developing in these various regions, and the future policy implications it may have for economic development in regions throughout the world," Sands said.

Chriss Swaney
(01/07/02)