Digital Supply Chain Hub - our people

Toby is an experienced company director has been Marketing Director, CEO, and now Executive Chairman, of The NBT Group Ltd, his family’s 114-year-old supply chain management business. Taking the helm in 2008, he steered it through the last recession andthen scaled it through a strategic pivot, and defining a value base, people led organisation that saw turnover grow from £3m in 2015 to £14m in 2018. This achievement saw the Company attain the accolade of being the fastest growing Company in the NE Fastest 50 Growing Companies List in both 2018 and 2019. In 2014,Toby founded Vytech Solutions Limited, a technology led business that is revolutionising how supply chains work through the creation of smart inventory digital twins and Industry 4.0/IoT automation.

Tim joined Digital Catapult in September 2021 as Director of Digital Supply Chain and the Made Smarter Innovation hub. Tim has extensive experience in improving global businesses and supply chains working within the Automotive, Consumer Goods, Aerospace, Defence, Construction, Life Science and Industrial Sectors. His experience includes 25 years in supply chain consultancy, leading global companies to deliver transformation in their business and operations focused on strategy, operating model and organisational design, digital supply chain, restructuring and performance improvement. He has extensive global experience having worked across 16 different countries in Europe, US and Middle East advising over 50 different companies in that time. An inspirational thought leader, Tim develops leading insights into global supply chain management, digital and manufacturing and is regularly quoted in the press and speaks on these topics at conference platforms across Europe.

Ying is a professor in supply chain analytics. Her own research interests cover machine learning, big data analytics, supply chain digitalisation and sustainability. She specialises in healthcare supply chain, international shipping, port management, and sustainable aviation supply chain. She has successfully won and completed several research and consultancy projects, including projects from EPSRC, Innovate UK, ERDF, Health Education England, EU horizon and industries. Ying is working with Ocado Technology to develop digital twins enabled ecosystem for social care and healthcare. Collaborating with the Port of Felixstowe (UK), Ying developed a big data driven prediction tool, to improve yard management, to tackle the challenges of traffic congestion in roads and to reduce impacts on environments. The KTP project funded by Innovate UK helps Hexcel Composites to make their supply chain more sustainable. Ying also actively works with institutions from the Oxford-Cambridge Arc Universities Group, to build the future of sustainable aviation in the UK.

Jan's work focuses on the pursuit of more responsible consumption and production through the alignment of product, marketing and supply chain strategy with consumer needs. In particular Jan’s work focuses on the design of end-to-end supply chains to enable responsibility, sustainability, resilience and productivity. As a chartered engineer, Jan has more than three decades of combined industry experience in product development, innovation, supply chain strategy, and process improvement working for ICI, Astra Zeneca and Dyson. She has advised government and industry on supply chain strategy and its relationship to industrial and business strategy. Jan is currently a member of the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) supply chain resilience advisory group. Jan is also a member of the advisory group for the Made Smarter Innovation (MSI) challenge, the MSI Digital Supply Chain Hub and the UK Manufacturing Forum. Jan is also a co-chair of the Regional Productivity Forum for the Midlands, part of the Productivity Institute.

Ron is the Head of Global Sustainable Financing of Menomadin Group, a diversified holding company with investments, operations, and philanthropy focused on Africa across all major SDGs. For the past 15 years, Ron has invested in impact tech startups that operate in SSA to address gaps in delivering primary products and services to previously excluded communities. In his previous capacities, Ron served as the Founding Partner of a venture capital firm based in West Africa, the first appointed economic representative to the Board of the World Bank Group by the Government of Israel, and an advisor on innovative financing to global 500 companies. Ron is a member of the investment committee of the EU Innovation Council, a $10B initiative that invests in innovative European companies. He is also on the Board of Advisors of Tel Aviv University Global Grand Challenge Innovation and on the board of advisors of Israel’s national climate tech accelerator. Ron received executive education from Harvard Business School focused on strategy in emerging markets. He earned his MBA from Georgetown University and his bachelor’s degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Clive has spent 40 years in the meat industry manufacturing & Retail. He has spent 17 years with Cranswick Convenience Foods as Operations and Technical Director. Previously he was at Sainsburys as a Meat Technologist .

Ruth is the Director of RMR Consultants working across Government, industry and academia to drive innovation forwards in the UK. Ruth has worked across multiple sectors to shape and frame proposals that seek to accelerate innovation through collaboration between industry, government and academia.
Ruth has held positions as the Chief Operating Officer of the Aerospace Technology Institute and Director of the Aerospace, Aviation and Defence Knowledge Transfer Network to develop a deep understanding of how government and industry work together on innovation agendas. Before moving into aviation, Ruth worked across a range of sectors including professional services, retail, engineering and oil and gas with a focus on change and engagement programmes.
Ruth is Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board for the Digital Supply Chain Hub which is steering and advising the strategic direction of the Hub.

Veera has held a number of senior and executive positions in the worlds of finance, TMT and management consulting, has been named the Asian Business Woman of the Year and profiled by the FT as a technology leader. As an entrepreneur and business leader she has been instrumental in challenging and shaping the supply chain and traceability revolution.

John is leading a team driving strategic initiatives for the SAP Digital Supply Chain solutions where he has been for 14 years. Their mission is to enable customers to achieve intelligent, sustainable and synchronised supply chains and operations that bring competitive advantage.

Sharon is a highly accomplished executive and non-executive director with global experience of deploying strategy and change leadership; commanding track record in strategic and operational leadership roles in public, private and the third sector, international groups, start-ups and influential trade bodies across diverse sectors including emerging and disruptive technologies, future mobility, intelligent transportation systems (ITS), smart cities, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV), mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) and charities.

Ben is the Deputy Director of the Innovate UK-led £300 million Made Smarter Innovation Challenge; a collaboration between UK government and industry designed to support the development and novel application of industrial digital technologies.

Prior to this, Ben held positions at HiETA Technologies, Airbus Group, University of Bath and Cobham. He is also founder of Added Lightness, a technology strategy consulting business, and Atherton Bikes, which brings together multiple-world champion and world cup winning athletes with the latest composite and additive manufacturing technologies.

Ben holds a degree in Materials Science and Engineering and an MBA from the University of Bath, a PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy from the University of Cambridge and is a Chartered Engineer.

Judith is a Biochemist, nutritionist, has an Honorary Doctorate in Agriculture from Harper Adams University, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), the Royal Society of Arts and Manufactures (RSA) and a liveryman at The Worshipful Company of Butchers.

Judith started her career in pharmaceuticals and teaching before finding her true vocation in food and farming. She worked in the food and drink industry for over 35 years starting in manufacturing at Bass and Mars, before moving into retail at Marks and Spencer and then Sainsbury’s as Director of Sainsbury’s Brand.

Today Judith is Deputy Chair of The Environment Agency, Honorary President of the British Nutrition Foundation, and now sits on the Natural Environment Research Council and the European Advisory Council of The Nature Conservancy, she is also Chair of both The Rugby Players Association and North Highland Products. Judith is a Non-Executive Director of Monaghan Mushrooms and Daemon, sits on the Board of Directors of MicroSalt, and is a Trustee of The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Accounting for Sustainability and The Matt Hampson Foundation. Judith is an ambassador for the Woodland Trust and Farm Africa.

Richard has spent over 25 years working in deeptech and materials research and innovation. He is co-founder and CTO at Pragmatic Semiconductor – a global pioneer in flexible integrated circuits. Previously he worked in the creation and development of multiple early-stage start-ups at the University of Manchester, OLED-T, Arvia Technology and NanoePrint. Richard holds a BSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Durham and is inventor/co-inventor on over 25 patent families. He is also a non-executive director at the Henry Royce Institute – the UK’s National Institute for advanced materials research.

Chris is Head of Supply Chain within BAE Systems, Air sector, responsible for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) supply chain activities. Chris has over 15 years’ experience within the Defence Sector and has worked on some of the UKs most advanced aerospace programmes in support of both domestic and international Customers. His current challenge is delivering the enablers and capabilities which FCAS requires in order to deliver a 6th Generation air system faster than has ever been done before. Chris earned a Bachelor of Science from Lancaster University and has completed a post graduate programme on Leading Management Transformation again from Lancaster University.

Philippa is a senior civil servant in Department for International Trade. With a focus on resilience and crisis response, her roles have included contingency planning for catastrophic hazards and threats, leading on the country’s National Risk Assessment, and responding to international and domestic incidents in the central crisis team for the UK. She most recently took up the role of Director Global Supply Chains in November 2020 where she is leading work to better understand the vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience in critical supply chains. In her previous role as Head of Consular Assistance in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Philippa received an OBE in the 2020 New Years Honours for services to British nationals overseas in recognition of her work in this area.

Kristin has diverse experience in both commercial and operational functions, with a passion and drive to improve the end to end customer experience to enable growth. She is a strong operations and channel marketing professional skilled in digitisation, lean process efficiency, project management, continuous improvement, strategic marketing and business development. She has been at Schneider Electric for 16 years.

Jen is currently the Group Sustainability Director at Unipart Group, where she has worked for nine years.

Nigel works on the Rolls Royce SMR programme, which has been derived to deliver a market driven, affordable, low carbon, energy generation capability. The design is based on optimised and enhanced use of proven technologies that presents a class leading safety outlook and attractive market offering with minimum regulatory risk, building an ambitious vision to ensure that emerging digital technologies including artificial intelligence, block-chain, fast data and emerging digital technologies are fully embraced. By actively co-creating with a vibrant digital eco-system the UK-SMR programme will embrace the latest thinking in software engineering, deep learning, machine learning and data innovation.

Aaron is currently working in supply chain transformation at Nissan. He has also managed outbound logistics engineering where he was responsible for the team that were building, managing, and reporting the outbound logistics budget in Europe, managing tenders in conjunction with purchasing on European scope for compounds and inland freight to get vehicles from plants to dealers.

James is considered an intelligent, energetic and trusted leader, with personal strengths in inclusivity and collaboration, customer focus, building effective teams and delivery of results. James has an excellent track record in operations leadership with a focus on manufacturing and supply chain strategy, sustainability, talent management, technology introduction, project leadership and operations excellence. James has over 20 years experience working for world class organisations in the Life sciences, Consumer, Industrial and Retail sectors, primarily in Europe and the Americas, including: B&Q, Watson-Marlow Fluid Technology Solutions, Johnson & Johnson, L’Oréal, Siemens, ASML, Unilever and DSM.

Sebastian is a member of the End-to-End Supply Chain Transformation leadership team. He is accountable for supply chain planning and response transformation. His objective is to optimise profit and sustainability through sensing, shaping and responding to customer demand for products and services, matching supply chain capabilities across the short, medium and long term time horizons.

Kevin is an experienced group managing director with a demonstrated history of working successfully across complex sectors and industry. Skilled in strategy development and implementation, negotiation, organisational and team training and development, multi-site remote operations, budgetary planning, management, lean processes quality improvement and gemba focus., strategic sourcing, management, and services delivery and contracting. Full P&L accountability through to health and safety and risk governance in highly regulated sectors. Strong entrepreneurship professional pursuing research focused on technology led consumer behaviour models in service delivery models with Cranfield University - Cranfield School of Management.

Jeremy has 25 years experience of growing manufacturing SME in aerospace.

Matthew has spent 22 years at CNS.

Grant is experienced in enterprise risk management, business continuity management
risk management outsourcing, claims consulting and advocacy, and risk financing.

As Deloitte’s UK leader for Industry 4.0, Nick is passionate and fascinated by the possibilities arising from combining the physical and digital worlds, so that businesses can better design, make and operate their products. He helps industrial clients imagine and deliver their futures by adopting technology to transform their businesses - combining the delivery of core systems with new, disruptive technology such as IOT. With more than 20 years consulting experience, he has designed, delivered and recovered large-scale transformation programmes with experience in global delivery; combining people, process and technology change; working hand-in-hand with colleagues, clients and partners; and drawing on a significant breadth of services, as you would expect from a Tier 1 consulting firm. He has a specific focus on the Energy, Resources and Industrials sector, where he is responsible for Deloitte’s Enterprise Technology and Performance services in the UK.

Ying is a professor in supply chain analytics. Her own research interests cover machine learning, big data analytics, supply chain digitalisation and sustainability. She specialises in healthcare supply chain, international shipping, port management, and sustainable aviation supply chain. She has successfully won and completed several research and consultancy projects, including projects from EPSRC, Innovate UK, ERDF, Health Education England, EU horizon and industries. Ying is working with Ocado Technology to develop digital twins enabled ecosystem for social care and healthcare. Collaborating with the Port of Felixstowe (UK), Ying developed a big data driven prediction tool, to improve yard management, to tackle the challenges of traffic congestion in roads and to reduce impacts on environments. The KTP project funded by Innovate UK helps Hexcel Composites to make their supply chain more sustainable. Ying also actively works with institutions from the Oxford-Cambridge Arc Universities Group, to build the future of sustainable aviation in the UK.

Dr Alireza Shokri is Associate Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management and also the Head of the subject group for the Operations and Supply Chain Management in Northumbria University at Newcastle in the UK. Alireza is also director of the newly developed Innovation centre of Excellence for Digital Supply Chain and Operations in Northumbria University. His main research interest covers areas such as digital operations and supply chain excellence, green supply chain and operations and quality management. As the Principal Investigator, Alireza is also currently leading on a Digital Catapult funded project about development of the digital Test Bed for the sector independent end-to-end spare parts supply chain. Alireza has also led an Innovate UK funded project before as the principal investigator that was about feasibility study of digital integration of spare part inventory management with predictive maintenance investigating process and cultural challenges and economic benefits. Alireza has been publishing papers in operations and supply chain excellence of which many of them recently published about Industry 4.0 integration with supply chain and operations excellence.

Thanos Papadopoulos is a Professor of Management (Information Systems/Operations Management) and Head of Department at the Department of ‘Analytics, Operations, and Systems’ of Kent Business School, University of Kent, UK. His research is focusing on the problems that are at the nexus of operations and supply chain management and digital transformation. He has published over 150 articles in peer reviewed journals and conferences including, inter alia, the British Journal of Management, Decision Sciences, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, European Journal of Information Systems International Journal of Production Research, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, International Journal of Production Economics, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and Production Planning and Control. He is Associate Editor for British Journal of Management and International Journal of Operations and Production Management, as well as Departmental Editor for IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He sits at the Editorial board of Production Planning and Control and is Distinguished Editorial Board member of International Journal of Information Management and International Journal of Information Management Data Insights.
Thanos is a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has recently been included in the Clarivate list of Highly Cited Researchers 2023 for a third time in a row, as well as in Stanford University's Top 2% of Scientists in the World for the single year 2023, marking three consecutive years of inclusion (2023, 2022, 2021).

Dr Abhijeet Ghadge is an Associate Professor (Reader) of Supply Chain Management at Cranfield School of Management, UK. He is a thought leader in Digital and Resilient Supply Chains and has secured several funded research and consultancy projects from Industry and government funding bodies (e.g., Innovate UK). He has several years of industrial, academic and consulting experience working with various UK, European and Asian organisations. Dr Ghadge has published widely and sits on leading logistics and supply chain management journal editorial boards.

Dr. Atanu Chaudhuri is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Durham University Business School, UK. Dr. Atanu has more than 8 years of industrial experience having worked in automotive industry, consulting and research- all in India and more than 13 years of academic experience across institutions in India, Denmark and UK. His research focuses on adoption of technologies such as additive manufacturing, blockchain across the supply chain, circular economy and sustainability and supply chain risk
management and resilience. His research has been funded by UK-India Education Research Initiative, European Regional
Development Fund, Danish Innovation Fund, INERACT, Tubitak, Durham University Institute of Advanced Studies, Durham University’s Strategic Research Fund and Smart and Scale Initiative of Durham University. He is currently working on an INTERACT funded project “Community co-created distributed manufacturing platform”. He is the co-founder of Durham University Responsible Space Innovation Centre working on projects related to circular economy in Space. He is a member of Digital Supply Chain Working group at Mobility Goes Additive, a leading
additive manufacturing network. His research has been published in leading journals in Operations and Supply Chain Management.

Aris Matopoulos is a Professor of Supply Chain Design at Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University in the UK. Prior to that he was the Head of the Department of Engineering Systems and Management at Aston University. He is a Senior Fellow of UK Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport. His research is interdisciplinary, applied and actionable aiming to make a real impact. For example, the Supply Chain Readiness Levels Tool he developed has attracted the interest of advanced engineering manufacturing companies from aerospace and defence. His research has appeared in various outlets such as: Decision Sciences, International Journal of Operations and Production Management. He is also the Associate Editor of the Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management. He has won over £2million of funding (e.g. European Commission-EC, Innovate UK, Advance Propulsion Centre) and has acted as an Expert Reviewer for the EC, UKRI, the French National Research Agency and Canada Excellence Research Chairs. In 2019 he was awarded the prestigious Royal Society Short Industry Fellowship and collaborated with Williams Advanced Engineering a world-class technical innovation, engineering and specialist low volume manufacturing services provider. His industrial research collaborators include Rolls-Royce, MBDA, Jaguar Land Rover, Marks & Spencer and many SMEs.

Professor Liz Breen is the current Director of the Digital Health Enterprise Zone, an innovation facility based at the University of Bradford. She is also Professor in Health Service Operations based in the School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences. Prior to this she was a Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at the University of Bradford Faculty of Management, Law and Social Sciences for 13 years. Liz is a Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research Fellow and an Affiliate member of the NIHR Yorkshire & Humber Patient Safety Research Centre.

Liz’s research focuses on improvement and sustainability in service supply chains with a specific interest in pharmaceutical supply chains. Her work aims to better understand the complexity of supply chain systems and learnings within and between supply chains. Projects focusing directly on the pharmaceutical supply chain explore areas such as medicines shortages, medicines optimisation and waste management, supply chain risk and patient safety.

Liz has also undertaken extensive media engagement discussing the creation and deployment of Covid-19 vaccines within the UK and globally. This work has been cited in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America and South America and Australia and in key media outlets such as The Guardian, Time Magazine and Forbes.

Dr George Bargiannis is Subject Area Leader for Computing and Information Systems and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems at the University of Huddersfield.

George has 17 years of research experience on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and their applications in service-oriented and cloud computing, construction, healthcare and supply chains. His research focuses on the integration of knowledge modelling and machine learning to deliver explainable AI solutions that increase trust, transparency and likelihood of adoption, such as customer-facing applications.

George’s research has been funded by EPSRC, Network Rail, Innovate UK and the European Union and has been published in major international multidisciplinary journals and conferences. George has also contributed to the Leeds City Region Supply Chain Programme which supported more than 300 SMEs to improve business performance and growth, advising on the key area of innovation and technology adoption.

Professor Maneesh Kumar is a professor in Service Operations at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University. He also holds an honorary Visiting Professor role at Cardiff & Vale University Health Board. He conducts cross-disciplinary applied research on topics such as Quality Management, Lean Six Sigma (LSS), Lean, Green, and Innovation (iLEGO), Lean and Industry 4.0 Integration (called Lean 4.0), High Reliability Organisations (HRO), Healthcare Process/Service Innovation, Circular Economy Business Model, Social Enterprises Innovation and Lean Start-up methodology. This has resulted in the publications of over 180 journals and conference papers, edited books, and conference proceedings. His research participants encompass a range of industries, including the Automotive Industry (India, UK, Japan), Service Industries and Public Sector organisations, including NHS, and Social Enterprises in India and UK. He has secured research funding worth over £5m from EPSRC, ESRC, Welsh Government, ERDF, and Highways England.

Jan Godsell is Dean of LB and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy at Loughborough University. Her work focuses on the pursuit of more responsible consumption and production through the alignment of product, marketing and supply chain strategy with consumer needs. In particular Jan’s work focuses on the design of end-to-end supply chains to enable, responsibility, sustainability, resilience and productivity.

As a chartered engineer, Jan has more than three decades of combined industry experience in product development, innovation, supply chain strategy, and process improvement working for ICI, Astra Zeneca and Dyson. She has advised government and industry on supply chain strategy and its relationship to industrial and business strategy. Jan is a former member of the Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) supply chain resilience advisory group. Jan is also a member of the advisory group for the Made Smarter Innovation (MSI) challenge and the UK National Manufacturing Forum. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Futures Council (GFC) for Advanced Manufacturing and Value Chains.

Shaofeng Liu joined Plymouth University’s Department of International Shipping, Logistics and Operations in 2009. Prior to that, she worked at Bath University and Strathclyde University. She obtained her PhD from Loughborough University specialized in global supply chain configuration and co-ordination. Her main research interests and expertise are in agri-food supply chain innovation, in particular, the adoption and application of digital technologies. She has undertaken a great number of influential, collaborative research projects funded by UK research councils and European Commission, addressing key issues in food supply chain risk management, resilience and orientation, cross-boundary knowledge mobilization and supply chain collaboration. She has published 2 books and over 200 peer-reviewed research papers. She is currently Chair for Euro Working Group on Decision Support Systems, an international professional society dedicated to decision making and decision support system technologies (https://ewgdss.wordpress.com/coordinators/). She has been Senior Editor and Associate Edition for a number of international journals. For more details of her work, please refer to her professional website: http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/sliu1

Dr Shanfeng Hu is an Assistant Professor working at the Computer and Information Sciences (CIS) Department at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. He obtained his PhD award from the CIS department in 2020 and subsequently joined as a Lecturer in the same year. During his PhD period between 2018 and 2020, he has been working part-time as a Senior Data Scientist in the financial industry for one and a half years. His current research is focused on machine learning, causal reasoning, and mechanism design, targeting applications in advanced manufacturing, supply chain management, and healthcare.

Prof Vikas Kumar is an Associate Dean for Research, Innovation and Enterprise and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at Birmingham City University, UK. He holds a PhD in Management Studies from Exeter Business School, UK and an Engineering degree in Metallurgy and Materials Science from Ranchi University, India. Prof Kumar is a leading operations and supply chain management researcher and has published more than 250 articles in leading high-impact international journals and conferences, including the Journal of Business Research, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics, Supply Chain Management: an International Journal, Management Decision, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Journal of Business Research, Expert System with Applications, and Production Planning & Control. His papers have appeared in A*/A ABDC and 4*/3* ABS-ranked journals. He has an excellent research track record with 13000+ citations on Google Scholar, an H-index of 62, and an i-10 index of 154. He serves on the editorial board of several journals, including the Journal of Business Logistics, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management and Business Strategy and the Environment. He has also successfully guest-edited several special issues in reputed international journals (ABS 4/3*/2*/1*). Prof Kumar works closely with businesses and has secured over £1 million in funding from various research agencies such as EPSRC, Innovate UK, British Academy, Newton Fund and British Council. His research interests include Sustainability, Industry 4.0, Circular Economy, Sustainable and Digital Supply Chain Management, and Operational Excellence.

Dr. Robert M. Learney – Head of Technology in Distributed Systems with 10 years of experience in the sector. Rob manages a team engaged in multiple collaborative projects aiming to improve the UK’s economic position through the appropriate use of this technology. These span aerospace, FMCG, food & drink, oil & gas, the nuclear industry, and construction with partners including BAE Systems, Heathrow, Ferrovial, P&G, BBC, Sony, and multiple leading UK universities. He is a published author and recognised international speaker on the transformative potential and uptake of these technologies.

Ben has been building communities across value chains and social networks in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia for over 20 years. From start-ups to multinationals, industry bodies to social movements, Ben's specialism in building digitally enabled sustainable & resilient value chains has been developed by working closely with leaders across every part of the food and fashion system furnishing him with an intimate knowledge of the industry and drivers for transformation at all tiers and scales.

Robert is a technologist, complexity scientist, entrepreneur, writer, and sought-after public speaker. He authored over 100 academic papers on complex-systems-based artificial intelligence and knowledge representation, conducted research and development projects for all branches of the US military, Los Alamos National and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, NASA, Boeing, NSF, EPSRC, The European Union, DERA, British Aerospace, and others. He is the author of Rage Inside the Machine, which was shortlisted for UK Best Business Book of 2020. Senior Fellow of the Computer Science Faculty at University College London. He also co-founded BOXARR Ltd.

Chetan joined Digital Catapult in October 2021 as a Programme Manager of Digital Supply Chain Hub. Chetan has over 13 years of experience managing programmes to deliver R&D strategy, new products, Supply Chain enhancement, and data-driven business transformation for global OEMs and consulting firms. His work spans across several industry sectors such as Automotive, Engineering, Power Electronics, and Pharmaceutical, thus bringing cross-industry learnings into his interventions. Chetan has previously worked as a Management Consultant for KPMG in India and the UK. He is PMP and PRINCE2 qualified and has a good knowledge of the APQP framework and extensive experience in delivering high-value collaborative R&D programmes.

With over 15 years' experience in the Technology industry, Kingsley has worked with the world's largest brands helping them understand the potential of technology to their business and designing solutions to meet their challenges. With a strong technology background, combined with a MBA and wide range of innovation roles, Kingsley is well placed to identify how to bring diverse organisations together with advanced technology, helping them to create their future. Retraining as a teacher mid-way through his career, Kingsley has a specific interest in bringing skills in learning and development to help people understand advanced technology in a way that allows them to think more broadly about its potential application and associated benefits.

Tim joined Digital Catapult in September 2021 as Director of Digital Supply Chain and the Made Smarter Innovation hub. Tim has extensive experience in improving global businesses and supply chains working within the Automotive, Consumer Goods, Aerospace, Defence, Construction, Life Science and Industrial Sectors. His experience includes 25 years in supply chain consultancy, leading global companies to deliver transformation in their business and operations focused on strategy, operating model and organisational design, digital supply chain, restructuring and performance improvement. He has extensive global experience having worked across 16 different countries in Europe, US and Middle East advising over 50 different companies in that time. An inspirational thought leader, Tim develops leading insights into global supply chain management, digital and manufacturing and is regularly quoted in the press and speaks on these topics at conference platforms across Europe.

Jem Henderson is an experienced marketing and communications professional working within the tech and digital industry for the last decade. They have previously worked on the IoTUK programme at Digital Catapult. They have also worked to support the tech ecosystem in Yorkshire as the Entrepreneur Engagement Manager for Tech Nation. They have expertise in community and ecosystem development, content creation and strategy including video and text, working with industry, government and academia, innovation, design thinking and workshop facilitation.