Mr Dick Meaney holding his UL Alumni Award

Following his earlier education at CBS Sexton Street, Limerick, Richard (Dick) Meaney graduated from NIHE (UL) in 1979 with a BSc Electronic Systems. He joined Analog Devices Limerick as a graduate design engineer, having spent a co-op period there. Joining a design team of 8 design engineers (today over 200 engineers), Dick worked for Dr Phil Burton who had been one of his Lecturers at UL and an example of the many links between the two growing organisations. Dick’s early design work included the development of ADI’s first switched capacitor-based data converters. 

Founded in Boston in 1965, today Analog Devices Inc. (ADI) is a global leader in high-performance semiconductors for signal processing applications. The company employs over 9,000 people worldwide and achieved almost $3B in sales in its financial year 2011. ADI has been operating in Ireland for 36 years and currently employs over 1,000 people at its Raheen campus in Limerick, which is home to ADI’s European-based semiconductor wafer manufacturing facility and R&D for analog technologies, including industry-leading data converters, as well as mixed-signal and RF (radio frequency) integrated circuits. ADI's operation in Ireland has a well-established record for engineering innovation and discovery,as evidenced bythe 287 U.S. patents granted to ADI inventors basedin Ireland,which is nearly 20% of the total U.S. patents held by the company and the highest number for technology companies based in Ireland. Analog Devices Limerick is the largest site outside of Boston and its key role in ADI success was underscored last year with the announcement of an additional 50 million euro R&D investment programme over the next 5 years. 

Returning from a 3 year assignment in Boston in 1991, Dick has since lived in Limerick, travelling extensively to visit customers and other ADI locations. In his leadership roles within the company, he has encouraged ADI’s engineers to understand customers’ problems and challenges and so develop the insights that enable their imaginative use of ADI technology to develop the most innovative products. During his 33 years with Analog Devices, he has held a variety of engineering and business leadership positions. For three years up to 2012, Dick was VP for Data Converter Products, a technology and business in which ADI is the world leader and accounts for approximately half of annual sales. ADI’s integrated circuits (ICs) play a fundamental role in converting, conditioning, and processing real-world phenomena such as light, sound, temperature, motion, and pressure into electrical signals to be used in a wide array of electronic equipment. Dick was recently appointed Vice President of Products and Technology, responsible for ADI’s R&D investment of over $500M per year. Leading a worldwide R&D organisation of over 2000 engineers, Dick and his team bring over 200 industry leading new products to market every year. 

Married to fellow UL graduate, Antoinette Murray (BBS ‘79), Dick and Antoinette have three adult children, two of whom are also UL alumni - Kevin (MA Interactive Media ‘06) and Claire (BEng Biomedical ‘08 and currently on a PhD programme at UL) while son Seán "broke with family tradition”, graduating from NUIG (BComm ‘06) and UCD Smurfit School of Business (MSc. Marketing ‘08). 

Dick’s early curiosity in how things worked was nurtured by his father, Jim, a motor mechanic by trade and teenage pocket money was earned by reconditioning car engines and fixing old motorcycles for resale. The motorbike bug has persisted and Dick has undertaken many adventure trips and insists that an early Sunday morning spin around Clare is the best cure for jetlag and work-related stress. College life at UL also gave Dick a love of squash which he played until recent years and is still searching for a substitute sport that comes even close to the fun and exercise he enjoyed. 

As a proud Limerick man, Dick has also played an active role in promoting his hometown and encouraging education and job promotion in the region. These principles are evidenced through his involvement with CBS Secondary School as a founder of the CBS High Achievement Awards; as an active member of the LIT Thought Leadership and Advisory Group which supports entrepreneurship and stimulates job creation; and as a former Chairman of the Atlantic Technology Corridor organisation, a technology cluster initiative whose mission is to accelerate the growth in the number and sustainability of businesses and research activities in the Mid West region of Ireland.