Advisory Board

Matt Ball

Matt graduated from the University of Liverpool after completing a Degree and PhD in Physics. He went on to join EPSRC in 2006, occupying a number of roles across Functional Materials, ICT and finally as Head of Business Engagement, responsible for the strategic relationship management model for business partners and launching the Business Engagement Forum which continues today. After a 12 month secondment to WMG at the University of Warwick, Matt joined Thales in 2017. As Chief Scientist, he is responsible for the academic engagement strategy for Thales Group in the UK, working across the UK business domains and Thales Global R&T community to deliver an effective network of high value partnerships for mutual advantage. He brings a wealth of experience working at the business/university interface from both a government and a private sector perspective.

Howard Benn
Chair

Howard started his career in the fixed telecommunication sector (Plessey) back in 1982, did his degree and PhD at Bradford University, moving into radio-based communications in 1989. He started working in ETSI GSM standards committees in 1993, helping create 3GPP and chairing 3GPP RAN 4 from 1998 to 2007. He has been a board member of ETSI since 2008, a member of the ICANN Nomcom in 2013 currently advising the ICANN board on mobile technology, and a member of a number of advisory boards for UK universities and research programs. His current role is ‘Vice President Communications Research for Samsung Electronics R&D Institute in the UK, managing a team of engineers covering ETSI, 3GPP, and GSMA. His team are also very active in the EU Horizon 2020 program with a focus on the 5G PPP activities. He also sits on the UK5G government advisory committee looking at the future of communications technology in the UK, and an advisor to the UK government on international free trade agreements.

Jose Luis Carrizo

José Luis has an extended career in the Telecom sector, having had multiple roles in Vodafone and Telefónica, both in operating companies as well as group roles. He started his career in R&D, working on the design of the radio interface of 2G and 3G technologies, and moved on to chair one of the 3GPP Committees responsible for that international standards area. Since then, José Luis has taken roles in technology strategy, architecture, product development, core network, IT application delivery and big data & analytics. He currently leads the Data & Automation function in O2.

David DeRoure

David De Roure is Professor of e-Research in the Engineering Science Department at the University of Oxford, and a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute (the national institute for data science and artificial intelligence). He has co-founded three interdisciplinary initiatives: the PETRAS National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity, which is the world’s largest socio-technical research centre focused on the future implementation of the Internet of Things; the Software Sustainability Institute, cultivating better and more sustainable software to enable world-class research; and PRiSM, The Centre for Practice & Research in Science & Music at the Royal Northern College of Music. Throughout his academic career David has investigated large-scale distributed and sociotechnical systems, with a broad interest in society, technology and creativity. From a background in electronics and computer science, he became closely involved in the Internet and Web communities, in pervasive computing, and in digital social research where he has championed the study of Social Machines – people and technology coming together creatively at scale. Today he focuses on living in the Internet of Things and on Digital Humanities.

Axel Heitmueller

Axel has been involved with Imperial College Health Partners since its conception in 2011 as an Interim Director and joined the Partnership full-time in August 2013 as Director of Strategy and Commerce. As of September 2016, Axel was appointed as Managing Director. He is also Visiting Professor at the Institute of Global Health Innovation. Prior to joining the Partnership, Axel was Executive Director of Strategy and Business Development at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He brings a broad range of experience from academia and central government where he was Deputy Director and Chief Analyst at the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office and No 10.

Joe McGeehan

Prof Joe McGeehan CBE DEng(Liv) FREng is Emeritus Professor of Communications Engineering at the University of Bristol and Senior General Advisor to Toshiba Corporation (and Founding MD of Toshiba Research Europe Ltd). He has considerable R&D experience gained over some 45 years at the Allen Clark Research Centre, The Plessey Company Ltd, and the Universities of Bath and Bristol. His PhD concerned negative ion-molecule interactions in heavily ionised plasmas. He has an international reputation in the fields of mobile communication systems, phaselocked loops, propagation, antennas and electromagnetics, and the physics and technology of compound semiconductors and their application to radar, telecommunications and ultra high-speed digital circuits. His pioneering research in radio wave propagation and mobile radio systems from 1973 onwards led to the use of many of the techniques, systems and standards used today including ray-tracing for predicting network coverage, linear modulation technologies, EDGE for 2.5G, WCDMA for 3G, WiFi (through HiperLan), ultra-linear high-efficiency RF Transmitters (handset and base station) for mobile and broadcast, 60 GHz communications, SMART adaptive beam forming antennas, rf mesh networks, software defined radio (SDR) and was the first person in the world to transmit multilevel data (16-QAM) in the multi path fading without the irreducible error rate. He received the IEEE Transactions Neil Shepard Award for best paper in Antennas and Propagation on Adaptive Beam Forming (SMART) Antennas and the IEE Proceedings Award for best paper on Satellite Tracking. He has also received Toshiba Corporation’s International Award for his outstanding contribution to wireless communications and has also received awards and prizes from both Motorola and Schlumberger for his research contributions to radio wave propagation and mobile radio systems respectively. In 1998, he was invited by Toshiba Corporation to establish Toshiba Research Europe’s Laboratory in Telecommunications and was also appointed (concurrently) Executive Dean of Engineering at Bristol where he completely restructured the Faculty of Engineering, completely rebuilding the Aerospace Department and winning £15M from HEFCE for the Bristol BLADE Project. From 2001 to 20010, he was a Plc Board Member of Renishaw advising on R&D and ICT and also worked with the Engineering Directorp to establish the Medical Systems Division. He was Senior Independent Director for his last 4 years of office. He has served on numerous national and international committees including the first ever DoT/MoD Spectrum Review Committee (300MHz - 3.4GHz)and was instrumental in the UK Government auctioning radio spectrum for cellular radio. He recommended at the time that the money raised be used to support the NHS and Education. In 2010, he was one of the 4 business representatives appointed to the Board of the West of England LEP taking responsibility for ICT and Advanced Engineering. In this role he established and then chaired the Invest in Bristol and Bath Board (IBB). He won the largest award of £15M from the Government’s Strategic Fund for LEPs in 2012 to establish TeraBit West (an Open R&D Broadband Network Testbed) across the West of England which has now led to BIO (Bristol is Open) and the extensive UMBRELLA IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) Testbed. From 1986 to 1992 he was consultant to Ned Johnson the Chairman and Founder of Fidelity Investments. As MD of Toshiba he has funded 2 Chairs and a lectureship at Bristol ( Communications Networks and Big Data), a Chair in Energy at Cardiff’s Institute for Energy and fully funded more than 130 PhD studentships in UK universities. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1993.

Jim Norton

Jim Norton a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering, where he is the retiring Chair of the Academy’s Community of Practice in Digital Systems Engineering and Chair of the Academy’s Digital Projects Review Group. He is a Director of the Canada-UK Council and was for 18 years an external member of the Board of the UK Parliament's Office of Science & Technology (POST). Jim has held board roles in the private, public, and charitable sectors and was a founder member Cabinet Office Performance & Innovation Unit, (later known as the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit). He is a Pro-Chancellor of Coventry University.

Mike Short

Dr Mike Short CBE joined the Department for International Trade as the first Chief Scientific Adviser in December 2017. Mike leads the science and engineering profession in the department and ensures its policy is informed by the best science, engineering and technical advice. He advises on technical aspects of future trade deals as DIT looks to create new arrangements following Brexit, and works with the UK’s research, development and academic communities to boost scientific and engineering exports. Mike has over 40 years’ experience in electronics and telecommunications and served as Vice President of Telefonica, the parent company of 02. He managed the launch of 2G (GSM) and 3G mobile technologies in the UK and led research and development for Telefonica Europe.

Matt Stagg

Matt is an award-winning expert with over 25 years of experience in Mobile Media, Entertainment, and Sport. Within BT Sport he is responsible for developing the broadcaster’s mobile capabilities from the camera through to the device. Matt led the team that delivered the award-winning world’s 1st remotely produced live sporting over 5G and is now working on deeply immersive AR and XR experiences utilising the capabilities of 5G and edge computing. As part of the wider BT Group Matt is developing the technology strategy for Broadcast, Media & Entertainment over 5G. Prior to BT Sport, Matt was Head of Media and Entertainment at EE. Matt is a regular keynote speaker at major events and also a member of UK5G Advisory Board representing Sport and the Creative Industries. UK5G is the national innovation network dedicated to the promotion of research, collaboration, and the commercial application of 5G in the UK.

Sylvia Lu

Sylvia Lu is an award-winning Chartered Engineer and a Non-Executive Director. Sylvia has over a decade of experience in the Telecom industry for four mobile generations (2G ~ 5G) with chipset vendors and was recognised as one of the UK's Top 50 Women in Engineering. Sylvia is Head of Cellular Technology Strategy at u-blox, where she leads cellular technology strategy, global standards and industry alliances. Sylvia serves on several national and global industry Boards: she is an elected board director of CW (Cambridge Wireless) Ltd, and serves on the Advisory Board of UK5G, co-chairs UK5G Manufacturing Working Group, and provides independent advice to the UK government and national 5G networks on future plans for 5G deployment. She serves on the Board of 5G-ACIA (5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation), joins forces with global industry stakeholders to influence 5G development and deployment in line with industrial imperatives to accelerate Industry 4.0. Sylvia operates on an international stage as keynote speaker on 5G, 6G, emerging technologies, global standards, trust, and D&I for a wide range of stakeholders across the UK, US, Barcelona, China, Baltic counties, France, Germany. She contributes to industrial magazines and journals, some of which have been translated into 7 languages with a global reach. Sylvia is pursuing an Executive MBA degree at the University of Cambridge. She holds a first degree in Electronic Engineering from Birmingham University and a Master of Science degree in Communications and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol.