Category: Delegate

As Managing Director, Mike is responsible for four business units within the Process Industries and Drives division. The focus areas within these units are growth, culture, strategy, productivity, stakeholder management, performance management, reporting and governance for the division, which comprises of around 300 employees.

In addition to being Managing Director of Process Industries and Drives, Mike is also a member of the Siemens Country Leadership Team, A supporter of the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) for Mersey Region (Incl. a board member of Liverpool SuperPort), a member of the IET Skills Policy Panel and Program lead for IFB2016 (International Festival for Business) for Siemens. Prior to this role, Mike has held a number of senior posts within Siemens UK; these included Divisional Director of Customer Services, General Management of Service Support and Training, General Manager of Industry Automation Solutions; Chemical & Pharmaceutical Sales Manager UK and Operations Manager for Process Industries UK.

Joining Siemens via the acquisition of Moore by Siemens in 2000, Mike was a member of Moore’s strategic management team based in USA Philadelphia. Initially selected for his knowledge in the project execution arena, but later expanded to oversee the roll out of processes and techniques that enabled Moore to service the market on an international basis.

Mike is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Institute of Measurement & Control and a Member of the Institute of Engineering & Technology, with a Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Electrical, Electronic and Control Engineering.

Dr Helen Finch is responsible for External Technical Affairs for Jaguar Land Rover’s Research group, including engagement on Innovation with industry bodies and business groups, collaborative activities, academic partnerships, and funding opportunities.

Helen graduated in Computer Systems Engineering from The University of Sussex and then went on to gain a Doctor of Philosophy degree for research into VLSI Architectures for CGI. Several years of further academic research and undergraduate teaching were followed by a move to the semiconductor industry in which Helen was active for more than 2 decades, firstly as a microelectronics design engineer and then later as a technical program manager. She has worked for Pioneer, ST Microelectronics and Infineon where she led chip designs in a variety of application areas including real-time graphics, video encoding/decoding, baseband communication, smart card security and automotive.

In recent years she has taken a leading role in collaborative engagement through funded projects, and in 2011 she built a European consortium of 24 industry and academic partners which led to a successful bid for a €20M project to address the application of functional safety for electronics and electrical systems across the automotive supply chain.

Helen is a member of the EPSRC ‘Manufacturing the Future’ Strategic Advisory Team, a board member of Birmingham Science City, and sits on a variety of academic and collaborative advisory boards.

Executive Summary

The R&D and Innovation landscape at Jaguar Land Rover covers a spectrum from early-stage, blue-sky research through to commercialisation in product development for manufacture. Universities form a critical part of this eco-system and we engage currently with more than 30 institutions. Our approach to this engagement strikes balances at a number of levels: strategic (long-term, multiple disciplines) versus tactical (targeted technical specialisms); curiosity-driven versus challenge-led; local versus international. We have a particularly fruitful relationship with WMG at Warwick for example, our research department being located on campus with engineers and researchers working closely together, but we also have a research presence on the other side of the world in MIT Media Labs.

Jaguar Land Rover enjoys a strategic partnership with the EPSRC through which we have co-funded two major research programmes working with group of universities on shared challenges. We believe that this approach gives both effective and efficient leverage of the UK’s academic base in a focussed and coordinated way to develop critical mass and to really enhance national capability.

We have recently joined a strategic research alliance with Harvard University along with three other Tata companies; this exploits the shared ethos of using technology to solve society’s big challenges and will develop both technologies and skills through leadership development with Harvard Business School.

Adam joined Rolls-Royce’s in 2007 to establish its multi-disciplinary Low Carbon Technology unit with responsibility for identifying and evaluating renewable and clean-tech opportunities across the group.

He is currently Head of Business for Rolls-Royce’s Future Technology Group – the unit that acts as the prime technological early warning system for the company as well as having responsibility for generating future concepts and developing, protecting and transferring cutting edge disruptive technologies across all of the Rolls-Royce businesses. This role involves considerable university and academic interaction, particularly on geared R&T programmes funded by the European Union, Innovate UK and the UK and US Governments. Other aspects of the role include technology road-mapping, business case development, relationship building, strategy buy-off and management of collaborative programmes.

As well as a Masters degree from Swansea University, Adam has an MBA from Imperial College and a Masters in Finance from Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

Executive Summary

Over the last 30 years, Rolls-Royce plc has developed a unique model of University-Business collaboration through its network of University Technology Centres (UTCs) and manufacturing research centres. This has delivered long-term capability and access to key talent and intellectual capability, essential for continuing success in extremely challenging technical fields. The company also benefits from the challenge and dialogue borne from diversity and a multi-sector perspective. In the session the speaker considers how this model may have to further evolve over the long term.

Cllr Susan Hinchcliffe is the Leader of Bradford Council as of May 2016. She was originally elected as Councillor for Windhill & Wrose in 2011.

In 2012 she became Executive member for Employment, Skills and Culture across the Bradford District, overseeing the largest local authority jobs programme in the country – Get Bradford Working. In June 2015 she also assumed political responsibility for Education in Bradford. Outside politics Susan has had her own business, worked in a Marketing agency and spent five years in a management role at a national newspaper. Until being elected as Council Leader she had been working for Business in the Community, a national charity which promotes responsible business practice. Here she managed the Healthy High Streets regeneration programme, a national programme operating in 67 towns across the UK.

As former President and current Chair of University Committee of the Kunming University of Science and Technology (KUST), Professor Yingjie Zhang cares tremendously about the internationalisation of the university among other things. KUST is a research oriented university and the largest university across China’s Yunnan province, and is among the top ten universities in China in its Metallurgical Engineering, Geological Mining, and Environmental Engineering programs.

Professor Zhang has held the position of President at several different universities over the past 10 years, and has made substantial contribution to the development of the universities. Professor Zhang is also wearing many hats of senior management at education related governmental organizations. As a professor in Material Science, Professor Zhang has been a Principal Investigator for many research projects, and has been awarded multiple awards for her research achievements at provincial level and national level.