Part of the Imagine Belfast Festival 2021, chaired by Queen’s Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise Professor Emma Flynn, the panel members of business leaders and academics will pool their collective knowledge of BRCD and the Innovation Strand projects to explore the details of the Deal and the opportunities it will create for Belfast and the surrounding regions.

It is anticipated that the Belfast Region City Deal will deliver more than 20 projects that will help grow the Belfast region’s business strengths in life and health sciences; ICT, digital and creative industries, and advanced manufacturing. It will also support digital development and tourism-led regeneration across the entire region, underpinned by infrastructure developments and investment in skills to connect people to jobs and services.

These projects will help to create new types of jobs for the future, underpinned by re-skilling programmes, by focusing on the region’s competitive strengths. They will also have a positive impact on the most deprived communities, delivering a balanced spread of benefits across the region.

The Deal’s Innovation strand projects have been directly shaped by input from hundreds of companies spanning varied industries. Over the past two years, Queen’s has been working with a broad range of regional companies and with public sector partners, such as the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust.

The Innovation projects have a central theme of digital, data-driven innovation. As the lockdown periods have brought sharply into focus, this is something companies need to future-proof their business models.

The project buildings will be enablers to take the projects to full scale, and there is a collective effort needed to finalise the Deal this Spring.

Work on BRCD began well before the current Covid-19 emergency, but the levers needed for economic growth haven’t changed: university-industry collaboration remains one of our most powerful tools for stimulating the economy and providing valuable benefits for the wider population. The Innovation projects will not only help to drive recovery, but can help develop distinctive sectoral strengths for the Belfast region and an ambitious vision for drawing in major international partners.

Running Order

1230: Welcome and Opening Remarks by Professor Emma Flynn, Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Queen's University Belfast

1235: Contributions from Suzanne Wylie, Chief Executive, Belfast City Council

1245: Contributions from Dr Godfrey Gaston, Executive Director, Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT)

1255: Contributions from Professor Mark Gillan, Chief Operations Officer, Artemis Technologies

1305: Q&A with online audience, facilitated by Prof. Emma Flynn

1330: Closing Remarks

Speakers

Professor Emma Flynn | Chair

As Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, Professor Flynn is responsible for enhancing the University's high-performing and innovative research environment. She also cultivates and advances effective relationships and collaborations with key institutional partners, including funders, government, health bodies, businesses and charities at regional, national and international level, driving the University's world-leading reputation for research excellence and its contribution to economic growth.

A senior academic leader within Queen's, Professor Flynn is a member of the University's Executive Board, which is responsible for steering and supporting the strategic direction of the University.

Professor Flynn is a leader in her research field – developmental and comparative psychology – with multiple international and inter-disciplinary collaborations. Her core research concern is how humans acquire their culture, and how culture changes.

Suzanne Wylie | Panel Member

Suzanne took up the post of Chief Executive of Belfast City Council in 2014.

During her time, she has built strong relationships with the private and wider public sector – pitching Belfast globally as a great place to live, work, visit and invest.

Suzanne has led the creation of and significant progress on the city’s 20 year strategy, The Belfast Agenda, which in the context of COVID-19 is more important than ever. With the buy in of Belfast’s key stakeholders she agreed a shared vision and created long-term ambitions for the city which include job creation, inward investment, and investment in neighbourhoods and skills. This includes targets to create 46,000 new jobs and attract 66,000 more city dwellers and to achieve over £1bn of real estate investment. The city is also focused on climate change and has set up a joint commission with the universities focused on how green investment can stimulate the economy.

Suzanne also led the charge to secure a £1bn Belfast Region City Deal – this investment will be a key pillar in how the city and its region rebuilds and recovers in the wake of COVID-19 with a huge focus on innovation and digital investment to propel competitive advantage.

Working with key city partners Suzanne is committed to weaving digital innovation into all aspects of our economy, infrastructure and healthcare services through the establishment of the city’s first Digital Innovation Partnership and has recently appointed a Digital Commissioner to help create smart innovation districts with business clusters in growth sectors such as tech and health diagnostics and analytics.

Suzanne has led the Council in its city leadership role during the response to COVID-19, and has started the careful planning for rebuilding and recovering with elected representatives and the city’s key stakeholders.

Godfrey Gaston | Panel Member

Dr Godfrey Gaston is Executive Director of the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT), based at Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland. Previous roles have included GEC Plessey Semiconductors, start-up BCO Technologies (acquired by Analog Devices) and Engineering Manager for Analog Devices. Current interests include developing models for commercialisation and innovation within a research environment, leading to economic development and the linking of cyber innovation ecosystems internationally.

Godfrey is also currently the user lead for the Global Innovation Institute (GII), a multi-disciplinary research and innovation institute, based at ECIT and part of the Belfast Region City Deal. The GII has a focus on the use of secure connected intelligence technologies in sectors such as One Health (combination of food and health sectors), financial services and advanced manufacturing.

He also co-founded start-up company, Titan IC, recently acquired by Mellanox Technologies/NVIDIA.

Professor Mark Gillan | Panel Member

Chief Operations Officer, Artemis Technologies Ltd and Strength in Places Programme Director, Belfast Maritime Consortium - our aim is to decarbonise maritime transportation, through the development of transformative zero emissions ferries in Belfast.

Mark started his career in aerospace before spending 15 years in various engineering leadership roles within Formula One, most recently as head of the race team at Williams F1. Prior to joining Artemis Technologies Mark was CTO of Innovate UK, responsible for both the Strategy & Impact and Centres & Networks Governance Directorates, overseeing an annual funding portfolio of over £1/3Bn.