The University of Liverpool’s Industrial Strategy team invites academic and professional services colleagues to join us for our sixth Industrial Strategy Open Event featuring speakers from Innovate UK and Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Those attending will benefit from insight into the UK’s R&D roadmap, funding and collaboration opportunities and there is also a chance to learn more about how we at the University can contribute to the Liverpool City Region Local Industrial Strategy.

Speakers:

Dr David Wilkes Deputy Director for Innovation Collaboration and Engagement, Innovate UK

Universities and businesses working together to deliver the UK’s R&D roadmap

Dr Aileen Jones Assistant Director, Policy and Strategic Commissioning - Liverpool City Region Combined Authority

Liverpool City Region Local Industrial Strategy: an update, next steps and how can the university contribute

Professor Laurence Hardwick, University of Liverpool Department of Chemistry

Our hosts for the event are Professor Rachel Williams, Professor of Ophthalmic Bioengineering and Chair of the University’s Industrial Strategy Steering Group, and Dr Sonja Vujovic, Head of Consultancy and Industrial Strategy projects, University of Liverpool.

This online event will be live on Zoom, attendees will be emailed a link ahead of the event date.

Speaker biographies:

Dr David Wilkes

David leads Innovate UK’s Innovation Collaboration and Engagement team, which is focused on connecting innovative businesses to partners and customers throughout the supply chain; connecting businesses to the research base; and connecting businesses to innovation expertise. David’s team also leads for Innovate UK on engagement with stakeholders across Government and all-round the UK who are passionate about supporting innovative businesses. Prior to joining Innovate UK, David had 20 years’ experience in defence R&D, programme management and strategy at the MOD. This included running some of MOD’s first openly competed R&D programmes with industry, MOD’s first SME innovation programme, and representing the UK in several large multinational collaborations. Most recently, he spent 4-years on secondment to the US Department of Defense, working on strategy and coordination across $25bn R&D programmes in the US Services and DARPA.

Dr Aileen Jones

Dr Aileen Jones is acting Director for Policy and Strategic Commissioning at the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority. Before that, she was Deputy Director of the Heseltine Institute at the University of Liverpool and previously Head of UK Public Policy for HSBC in London, following fifteen years working in public policy. She has spilt her career between the public and private sectors, including three years in Parliament as a Committee Specialist, leading Select Committee inquiries on a wide range of public policy issues including security, criminal justice, and community relations. Aileen also spent time on working on health policy at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and the General Medical Council where she was involved in a complex programme of reforms which changed the way doctors were regulated and patient rights were protected.Aileen spent several years working on financial services and consumer affairs at the Financial Services Authority, where she worked on a major policy consultation on financial advice and consumer rights and then at HSBC where she reported to the UK Chief Executive on all public policy and government affairs. In 2014, Aileen became a mum and, following a period of maternity leave, took a career break. She relocated from London to Merseyside with her husband and daughter.

Professor Laurence Hardwick

Laurence Hardwick is Professor of Electrochemistry and Director of the Stephenson Institute for Renewable Energy within the Department of Chemistry at the University of Liverpool. He received his MChem in Chemistry in 2003 from the University of Southampton and PhD in Chemistry from ETH-Zurich in 2006. Before joining Liverpool in 2011, he spent his postdoctoral time working at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the University of St Andrews investigating Li-ion battery electrode degradation mechanisms, lithium diffusion pathways through carbon and the chemical and electrochemical processes in Li-air cells.

His recent work has focused on the development of advanced in situ electrochemical surface enhanced infrared and Raman methodologies that examine electrochemical reaction mechanisms on a variety of electrodes interfaces which assist in our understanding on the function of metal-air and Li-ion batteries.

Open Event: Collaborating with industry and city region partners