Category: 2016 Speaker

Professor Heng is now retired; formerly he was a vice president of NTUST. Prior to that he had served as a Director General of Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute and a Vice President of Motorola Inc. YC is a Fellow of IET in the United Kingdom.

Mark has spent over 30 years in Marketing, CRM and Business Development in a variety of high-profile private and public sector organisations worldwide.

In his early years he was Marketing Director for Principality Building Society in Wales and Head of Customer Management for Royal & Sun Alliance (responsible for leading Customer Management for the launch of MORETH>N), before running his own CRM consultancy, helping over 30 companies worldwide to develop effective customer management practices and training programmes.

He was instrumental in setting up Confused.com, before taking up a senior interim management career with organisations such as Open University, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, Yell Group Plc, British Airways and Barnardos.

Latterly he has been Director of Marketing, Communications and Student Recruitment for City University London and the University of West London, where he was responsible for developing and leading the marketing and communications as well as UK and International recruitment strategies for both institutions. He was appointed as Director of External Affairs, as a member of the Executive Board at the University of Bradford, in June 2013.

He is also a Governor of Leeds City College; Board Member City of Bradford UNESCO City of Film; Member of Advisory Board, Bradford Literature Festival; Board Member of Active Bradford and the Chair of Advisory Board, Theatre in the Mill.

Dr Fernandez is the Executive Director of RMIT Europe. Marta leads the European coordinating center of Australian university RMIT in Barcelona. The Centre was funded in 2013 and is focused on extending RMIT’s global reach across research, industry partnerships and student mobility. As the University’s European hub, Marta has a team of researchers and professional staff connecting RMIT in Australia and Asia with Europe.

Prior to joining RMIT, Marta was based in the UK where she held the position of Global Research Leader at Arup, the global design and engineering company. At Arup, Marta’s role involved developing and implementing Arup’s corporate research strategy and cultivating Arup’s Research Network. She was responsible for managing the Global fund that Arup invested in R&D and the company’s engagement with universities and funding agencies. Marta was also part of the group leading Corporate Venturing at Arup.

She has a strong interest in urban wellbeing and has been member of expert panels in nature based solutions in cities, energy efficiency and active ageing and the built environment. She represents RMIT on the European Construction Technology Platform and the European Universities Association.

Marta is a Chartered Chemical engineer and has a PhD in Carbon Sequestration. She has had executive business training at London Business School, Cambridge and Imperial College Business School on Innovation, R&D Management and Technology Commercialisation. Marta’s expertise is in global research portfolio management, research strategy, partnering, knowledge transfer, impact of R&D and research based business opportunity creation. Marta teaches R&D management in the University of Granada and holds honorary appointments at University College London in Management Sciences and Innovation and Imperial College Business School. She is member of IChemE, the Innovation and Emerging Technologies Panel at the IET and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.

Professor Feigin was appointed in 2013 as the Vice President for Strategic Projects, a newly created position in which he is responsible for planning and oversight of Technion’s strategic projects overseas – in particular the Technion Guangdong project, with partners Shantou university and the Li Ka Shing Foundation. From 2007 through 2013, he served as Senior Executive Vice President, helping to forge the Technion’s partnership with Cornell University and its winning bid to build what is now the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute in New York City. A member of the academic faculty as well as the Senior Administration, he also served as Dean of The William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management from 1999-2002.

Holder of the Gruenblat Chair in Production Engineering, Professor Feigin is an authority on statistical design and analysis of experiments including genomic and clinical studies. His research covers three main areas: inference for stochastic processes (such as for time series or discrete event sequences); modern methods of forecasting and data-mining, in which he has created models that have been used to forecast electricity demand; and design and analysis of industrial experiments and clinical trials. His most recent research projects include statistical analysis of genetic association studies and analysis of customer patience in call centres.

Professor Feigin has extensive experience in industry. He has worked for Teva Pharmaceuticals as a statistical consultant, and he until recently served as the scientific director of TechnoSTAT, a data management and biostatistics company that provides services to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Together with Professor Ayala Cohen, he founded and headed the Technion Statistical Laboratory, which to this day provides a broad range of consulting services to academic researchers as well as to government and industry.

Professor Feigin earned his bachelor’s degree at the University of Melbourne in 1972 and his doctorate at The Australian National University in 1975 — both in statistics. He started his career at the Technion, joining the faculty in 1976. He spent the academic year 1981-1982 as a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley and 1987-1988 as a visiting scientist in the Division of Mathematics and Statistics of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford University for several summer sessions, and has held short-term visiting positions at the University of Melbourne, Cornell University, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and Monash University in Victoria, Australia.

He has published over 50 scientific papers, is a past president of the Israel Statistical Association, and is an elected fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics and of the International Statistical Institute.

He and his wife Naomi have 3 daughters and 8 grandchildren.

Professor Davies has a career which includes senior institutional management and international research, consultancy and teaching in the field of higher education policy and management. He is currently an international consultant in higher education, Visiting Professor of Higher Education Management at the International Centre for Higher Education Management at the University of Bath where he was the first Director of the doctoral programme in Higher Education Management, and an International Associate of the Leadership Foundation.  His previous positions have included Foundation Dean of the Anglia Business School, Dean of the Graduate School, Pro Vice-Chancellor at Anglia Ruskin University for Research and Enterprise and Pro Vice-Chancellor at La Trobe University, Australia for Quality Assurance and Organisation Development.  He is also a University Governor.  Since 1970 he has been one of the leading commentators on European higher education management and has been a principal consultant with the IMHE programme of OECD, the European Association of Universities (EUA) – formerly the European Rectors Conference, UNESCO, Soros Foundation, World Bank and the European Commission.

He has been a leader nationally and internationally in establishing higher education management as a field of study in universities in UK and Europe. He was Academic Director of the EUA/OECD programme for New Rectors since its inception (1979 – 2002); Director of the Southern Universities Management Programme (1977 – 1993); Director of the Australia Vice-Chancellors’ Committee Leadership Programme (1991 – 1995); Academic Director of the Latin American Rectors programme (1994 – 1998); Chair of the Faculty of the Russian Universities Project of the Salzburg Seminar (1997 – 2005); and Academic Director of various Leadership Foundation International Programmes (2005 – present), including Iraq, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Malaysia, and co-Director of the Global Programme for Rectors of Catholic Universities.

He has directed numerous strategic consultancy projects in higher education in 59 countries globally, and most recently in Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Wales and Russia and for the Vatican, on themes as indicated below.

His principal interests at the present are concerned with the development and implementation of new technological universities, and he is Policy Adviser to the Connacht Ulster Alliance which is developing a T.U. for the north west of Ireland. He has held similar roles in Finland, Ireland and Sweden and with national governmental HE agencies.

He is sought after as a leader and team member of strategic reviews/audits especially the CRE/EUA Quality Audit project; the Salzburg Global Seminar’s Visiting Advisor Programme in Russia and Central/Eastern Europe; and by national Quality Agencies in Finland, Ireland, Australia, Lithuania and Bahrain. He has also led strategic reviews, and led country reviews of national systems of higher education for OECD. He is an international monitor on issues of academic freedom and institutional autonomy for the Magna Charta Observatory.

His main publications and research interests, and related consultancy activities for international, intergovernmental, national, government and HE organisations have been focused on

• the concept and practice of entrepreneurialism in higher education
• the internationalisation of the university
• the management of financial reduction
• university strategic planning and institutional transformation
• institutional evaluation and quality enhancement
• globalisation and higher education
• university governance and organisation (also as a university governor)
• university leadership and the operation of senior management teams
• research policy and management
• the regional role of the university
• institutional mergers and larger entities
• conceptualisation and design of technological universities
• evolving doctorates
• research strategy
• the balance between public accountability and institutional autonomy and academic freedom and the design of relevant instruments to achieve this in specific settings

Professor Coaldrake AO is Vice-Chancellor and President of Queensland University of Technology, a position he took up in April 2003. Peter is a dual Fulbright Scholar, and author or editor of a number of books and monographs, including most recently as co-author (with Dr Lawrence Stedman), of Raising the Stakes: Gambling with the Future of Universities (UQP, April 2013). A second edition has been published in 2016.

Peter Coaldrake served a two year term as Chair of the Board of Universities Australia until May 2011. He returned as a member of the Board in May 2014. He has been Chair of the Queensland Heritage Council since 2010 and is a trustee of the Queensland Museum Foundation. Peter is the current Chair of the National Fulbright Selection Committee.

Harriet is responsible for providing operational and strategic leadership in the enhancement and evaluation of the student experience. She will be ensuring that the student voice is heard, and will facilitate partnership working, ensuring that student engagement is central to all of the University’s activities. After completing her DPhil via the universities of Sussex and Toulouse, and following a postdoc in Psycholinguistics, Harriet returned from France to join first the Oxford Learning Institute, and then Wolfson College and Oxford’s Department of Education as a Research Fellow. Post-Oxford, Harriet worked at UCAS, the 1994 Group, and the University of Bath in senior research and policy positions. Harriet’s most recent position was at the University of Bradford where she was a Director and the Strategic Advisor to the Vice-Chancellor.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Shirley Congdon is responsible for the leadership and management of the University of Bradford, leading the development of its values and strategy.

Shirley is the eighth Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bradford and is the first women to hold the role. Shirley has significant experience of working in higher education championing the quality of the student experience, widening participation, engagement with business and communities and advancing the quality of research and innovation.

Originally qualifying as a Registered Nurse, Shirley’s professional and academic expertise lies within the area of health and social care, service modernisation and cultural change, research methods and evidence-based practice. She has a strong track record in all aspects of university leadership, having worked within the field of higher education for 25 years and held senior roles in three different universities.

Shirley is passionate about equality and diversity, social inclusion and widening participation in higher education; opening up opportunities and unlocking potential for people of all backgrounds.

Shirley is a tireless ambassador for students and is committed to ensuring they receive the education, experience, and support they need to reach their potential and move into their chosen career or further study after graduating.

Professor Julia Buckingham read Zoology at the University of Sheffield and, after a short spell in the pharmaceutical industry, moved to London to study for a PhD in Pharmacology at the University of London and to pursue an academic career. She was awarded a DSc and appointed to the Chair of Pharmacology at Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School in 1987 where she became Pre-clinical Dean in 1992. She joined Imperial College London in 1997, contributing to the establishment of the new Faculty of Medicine and held the roles of College Dean for non-clinical Medicine, Head of the Department of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Head of the Centre for Integrative Mammalian Physiology and Pharmacology and Pro-Rector (Education and Academic Affairs). In 2012 she was appointed Vice-Chancellor and President of Brunel University London. Throughout her career Julia has combined research and education with supporting the broader aspects of academic life through work with the research councils, medical charities and learned societies. She has published widely in her field, served on numerous national and international review panels and received a number of prestigious awards and honours for her work. Former roles include President of the British Pharmacological Society, President of the Society for Endocrinology, member of the Sykes Commission, Editor of the Journal of Neuroendocrinology, Chairman of BioScientifca Ltd, Trustee of the Royal Institution and a Governor of St Mary’s Calne. She is currently a Trustee and Member of the Board of the Royal Society of Biology, a Trustee, Treasurer and Member of the Board of Universities UK, a Director of Imperial College Health Partners and of the National Centre for Universities and Business and a member of the All-Party Parliamentary University Group Council.

Brian Cantor is Professor of Materials at Oxford and Brunel Universities. He is also Founding Chair of the World Technology Universities Network, a Trustee of the Science Museums Group and an Editor of Elsevier’s premier review journal, Progress in Materials Science. He has published over 300 books and papers. He invented the field of High Entropy Alloys and discovered “Cantor alloys”. In the recent past, he has been Vice-Chancellor of the Universities of Bradford and York, Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at Oxford, a research scientist at GE Labs in the USA, a consultant for Alcan, NASA and Rolls-Royce, and a Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has worked at other universities such as Sussex, Northeastern, Banaras, Washington State and IISc Bangalore, and chaired or been on boards such as the Marshall Aid Commission, the UK Universities Pensions Forum, and Bradford, Leeds and York Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs). He founded and built up the Begbroke Science Park, the Heslington East Campus, the Hull-York Medical School, the National Science Learning Centre, and the World Technology Universities Network. He has received academic prizes, honorary professorships and fellowships in the UK, USA, China and India. He was awarded a CBE for services to higher education in 2013.