Speakers

David is the Advanced Materials Lead at the National Composites Centre and currently chairs the UK-Ceramic Matrix Composite working group.

Prior to joining the NCC, David has worked in composite R&D at Solvay, Warwick Manufacturing Group, The University of Birmingham, and Rolls-Royce. His research has focused on both Ceramic and polymer matrix composites.

Tony Kinsella joined Lucideon in July 2004, bringing over 30 years’ experience in general management to his role. Tony is a qualified marketeer, strategist and leader and has a background in chemistry.  Tony has led Lucideon to its market-leading position as a development and commercialisation organisation (DCO), specialising in materials technology, processes, and testing.

His day-to-day role encompasses leading the Group and the Management Team and horizon scanning with a view to future proofing Lucideon alongside the CSO; and directing decisions on investments and spends.

Tony has lived and worked in the USA, Germany, South Africa, alongside the UK and brings his varied experience to his position as CEO and to his position as Director of Lucideon Group Ltd and all Lucideon companies.

Professor David Knowles joined the Henry Royce Institute as its CEO in early 2019, bringing with him a wealth of experience from senior roles in both academia and industry in the areas of materials and structural integrity. David is particularly experienced in leading the collaboration between higher education and industry, to accelerate energy sector-related research, knowledge transfer and implementation.

David is a Fellow of the Royal Academy, a Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Bristol University and was Co-Director of the South-West Nuclear Hub and Atkins Fellow. Through his career he has lead materials research at Shell Global Solutions, served as CTO at Quest Integrity (operating throughout Australasia and SE Asia) and lectured at Cambridge University; collaborating with Rolls-Royce as Assistant Director of their Ni-alloy UTC.

In recent years David has led industrial projects related to design and assessment of renewable energy offshore structures, oil and gas and nuclear plant. He holds and participates in several EPSRC/Innovate grants and is the PI on ‘SINDRI Prosperity Partnership’ which is developing cutting-edge digital technology for nuclear plant design and assessment.

Dr Ehsan Sabet is an associate professor of Ceramics AM at Loughborough University and the founder and CEO of Additive Manufacturing Centre of Excellence, the biggest ceramic 3D printing facility in Europe with over two hundred ceramic printers and a full material development and a characterisation facility in Derby, UK.  Ehsan has twenty years of experience in research and manufacturing in material development and 3D printing. His track record of managing multi-million pounds industrial and research projects has made impacts in the supply chain of Rolls Royce (RR), SIEMENS, Jaguar & Land Rover (JLR), JCB Compact Systems, and General Motors (GM), as well as many small and medium-sized manufacturers in the UK and Europe.

Mandar Thakare is the Associate Director of ICAM. He joined bp in Sep 2019, as the Materials Science Programme Manager in Group Research, and is responsible for the operational aspects of the ICAM partnership. He has over ten years’ experience in materials engineering, innovation strategy and new product development. Prior to joining bp, he worked as an Innovation Programme Lead at Element Six Ltd., where he supported a multi-site global team of scientists in developing and commercialising novel polycrystalline diamond products for oil and gas applications. As part of this role, he was closely involved in developing cutters for a range of O&G drilling applications across the globe, working closely with field users and drill-bit manufacturers.

He holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering (Mumbai, India), MSc in Surface Engineering (University of Nottingham), a PhD in Tribology (University of Southampton, Schlumberger plc funded) and an MBA (Alliance Manchester Business School). Prior to Element Six Ltd., he held a post-doctoral research position at the Osney Thermofluids Lab, University of Oxford, working closely with Rolls-Royce plc on gas turbine seals. During this period, he also tutored undergraduates in Engineering Science at St. Catherine’s College, Oxford. After his PhD, he worked for Schlumberger plc, developing wear-corrosion resistant solutions for downhole directional drilling systems. During this period, he was responsible for identifying and qualifying coatings and materials solutions for Schlumberger tools deployed globally, through new suppliers and technologies. He has published journal papers, book chapters and conference papers on the subject of tribocorrosion and is a member of the IMechE Tribology Committee as well as a reviewer for journals such as Wear, Tribology International, ASME Journal of Tribology.

Rachel is a Policy Manager at Ceramics UK and manages a range of areas including skills and employment. After studying Politics at Lancaster University, she went on to work in the political field for a number of years in London before moving back to Cheshire; she has been at Ceramics UK for 6 years.

Dr Tom Whitehead leads the Science Team at Intellegens. Tom has a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge and extensive experience of practical applications of machine learning in industry. His team works closely with R&D teams in the materials, chemicals, and manufacturing sectors to understand their product and process development problems and to apply the Intellegens technology to accelerate innovation. Tom is also active in the development of new machine learning methodologies to address high-value data analysis bottlenecks.