Dr Richard S. Hirsh has been appointed as the new senior scientific programme officer with the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Division of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). In this role, he will be responsible for providing strategic inputs into the development of SFI policies in the ICT sector to ensure that SFI-funded research in Ireland is promoted and conducted effectively. He joins SFI from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) where he spent 16 years in the Directorate for Computer Science and Engineering. At the NSF he had responsibility for many large programmes and initiatives, including Terascale Computing, Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure and the NSF-funded Science and Technology Centres Programme.