John received a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 1997. After graduating he became a postgraduate member of the Knowledge and Data Engineering Group within the Computer Science Department at TCD. During this time he conducted research in the area of content generation and publishing on the World Wide Web and in 2000 received a Masters in Computer Science.

In his time as a postgraduate student, John lectured and assisted on a number of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. He continues to lecture part-time at Trinity College. John maintains an interest in electronic publishing and emerging Web technologies including XML and has presented papers and workshops at a number of international conferences. In 2000 John co-founded deepX Ltd., a company specialising in data engineering and electronic publishing using XML technologies.