Prof George Bain has a reputation for getting things done. He was born 59 years ago, the Canadian son of a Scottish carpenter and a Belfast-born mother, and grew up in the prairie province of Manitoba.
His great-grandmother ran one of Belfast's bestknown pubs, Pat's Bar in the Docks area, at the turn of the century.
He inherited from his mother a passionate belief in education as the way out of social disadvantage.
Prof Bain has written and edited numerous books about industrial relations, trade unions, mediation and arbitration, areas in which he is an internationally acknowledged authority. He has frequently acted as an arbitrator and mediator in industrial disputes.
He has been professor of industrial relations at UMIST in Manchester and at Warwick University, and director of the Social Science Research Council's industrial relations research unit.
In 1989, Prof Bain became principal of the London Business School. In less than a decade he turned the LBS from a run-of-the-mill institution into a business school whose MBA degrees were considered among the world's best.
He did this partly by doing what he is now trying to do at Queen's - by weeding out the weaker elements among the staff.
Prof Bain is reputed to have taken a 25 per cent cut in his £136,000 annual salary at the London Business School to come to Queen's.
He was active in Canada's equivalent to the Labour Party - the New Democratic Party - in his youth and is close to the New Labour establishment in Britain. He chaired the Low Pay Commission set up by the Labour government to recommend a level for the new minimum wage.