Indoor Positioning: Where are we?

Mayank Batra

Principal Engineer, Qualcomm Technologies International, Ltd.

Mayank Batra is a Bluetooth standards leader in Qualcomm Cambridge with two decades of experience driving innovation in wireless connectivity. Mayank has played a pivotal role in the evolution of Bluetooth technology, leading the adoption of features that are central to modern indoor positioning.

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Paul Bearpark

Head of Electronics & Software, 42T

Paul is an experienced engineer, engineering manager and product manager. He has spent over 30 years working in the field of electronics in both product development companies and technology consultancies. During his career he has led the development of products through their entire life-cycle from concept to volume manufacture and on-going support and upgrade. He specialises in radio communications, sensor systems and systems engineering. He has worked in the defence and security, telecommunications, and test and measurement industries. Paul studied Physics with Electronics at the University of Manchester and has an MBA from Warwick Business School.

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Chris Cobb

Strategic Business Development Manager, Resilient Timing, , National Physical Laboratory

Chris is a member of the Partnerships team at NPL and the business development lead for the National Timing Centre's (NTC) resilient timing and innovation exploitation and engagement. He joined NPL in 2022 with extensive global trade and investment experience covering maritime, energy, renewables, agribusiness, fintech and space with the UK and Australian governments.  Chris has experience in commercial, business development, market selection, operational set-up, finance, government affairs, policy and project management. Chris’ early career was as a Group Financial Controller for a listed property company. As part of the business development team at NPL, Chris works closely with the science and engineering teams to develop new strategic and business partnerships, and deliver maximum impact to industry and promote innovation with NPL’s timing service portfolio.

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Professor Paul Groves

Professor of Positioning and Navigation, University College London (UCL)

Paul Groves is Professor of Positioning and Navigation. He specialises in robust positioning and navigation techniques for challenging environments. These are a key enabler for many different engineering problems. He is interested in all navigation and positioning technologies, including global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), inertial sensors and environmental feature matching. Particular focuses include exploring novel positioning techniques, developing reliable urban positioning and integrating complex sensor combinations in multiple contexts. He is also author of the ~800-page book Principles of GNSS, Inertial, and Multisensor Integrated Navigation Systems (Artech House, 2008 and 2013).

Paul joined UCL's Space Geodesy and Navigation Laboratory (SGNL) in 2009 after 12 years at DERA and QinetiQ. He is an inventor of the GNSS shadow-matching technique and other approaches to 3D-mapping-aided GNSS. He has contributed to innovations in terrain-referenced navigation, visual navigation, positioning using Wi-Fi signals and AM radio broadcasts, heterogeneous feature-matching, detection of GNSS NLOS reception and multipath interference, and context-adaptive navigation. Paul is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), a member of the Institute of Navigation (ION), a Chartered Physicist. He is the recipient of the 2016 ION Thurlow Award and the 2024 RIN harold Spencer Jones Medal.

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Richard Hoptroff

Founder, Director and Chief Time Officer , Hoptroff

Richard Hoptroff is Founder, Director and Chief Time Officer at Hoptroff, which serves the PNT (Position, Navigation and Time) community. He is a long-term technology inventor, investor and and tech startup specialist. His previous ventures include Right Information Systems (1992), an AI forecasting software company, sold to Cognos Inc (part of IBM) in 1997; a postdoc in dating buildings at RLAHA, Oxford University, and Flexipanel Ltd. (2010) supplying Bluetooth and USB modules to the electronics industry. 

Tamzin Lent

WYA- WhereYouAt

Tamzin Lent is the founder of Where You At, a company that helps large event organisations keep their attendees safe and able to communicate even in congested environments. Featured in Forbes Under 30 for her work, she has raised over £3.5M to build the future of communication and tracking at events.

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Fredi Nonyelu

CEO, Briteyellow

Briteyellow is a UK deep tech company pioneering spatial intelligence to make built environments smart, inclusive, and human centred. Founded in 2003, the company has evolved from wireless communications into a vision-enabled platform that transforms how people navigate and experience indoor spaces. Its technology combines digital twins, AI, and IoT to deliver accessible navigation, safety, and operational efficiency across healthcare, transport, and care settings. By reducing assistance requests, enabling faster hospital discharges, and improving independence for disabled and older people, Briteyellow is redefining how buildings serve society—embedding accessibility and empathy into the fabric of public and commercial environments.

: www.briteyellow.com

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Nancy Scott

Hoptroff Smart Timing

Nancy Scott is the Corporate Projects Director at Hoptroff, a timing technology company delivering resilient, traceable, and compliant time synchronisation solutions for critical sectors ranging from financial services, data centres, governments to medical devices companies. Nancy has had an eclectic and career spanning the not-for-profit and private sectors. Her early career was spent in the not-for-profit sector, working on initiatives around social inclusion, and economic regeneration. She later transitioned into the private sector, joining international management consultancies, beginning at PwC, where she advised at board level on organisational design, corporate expansion, and market entry strategies. At Hoptroff Nancy has been part of the start-up team, combining her understanding of regulation, compliance, and international business growth with her passion for innovation, focusing on timing technologies within the broader Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) ecosystem. She has a global role working with partners developing resilient timing solutions that ultimately enhances the quality of data for the modern information age. She believes accurate timing makes trusted data as you can prove the sequence of events and track its entire history. Alongside her day job, Nancy is passionate about inclusion. She is currently a trustee of P3 Charity — a national organisation providing vital services to vulnerable people across the UK.

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Marianne Slamich

CMO, Pointr

Marianne Slamich is the CMO at Pointr, a global leader in digital mapping and blue dot navigation. She drives growth and innovation in location intelligence, helping Fortune 500 clients and partners such as Microsoft, Amazon, Cisco, CES and Siemens deliver exceptional visitor experiences through AI mapping and blue-dot navigation. Pointr has mapped over 5 billion square feet worldwide, transforming how people interact with buildings. Previously, Marianne held roles at Airbus and Scalable Capital, where she focused on digital experiences.

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Dr Chris Steer

Managing Director, Geoptics

Chris is Managing Director of Geoptic Infrastructure Investigations, leading the translation of muon-based positioning from research to reliable field systems for tunnels and subsurface infrastructure. The Geoptic team combines Monte-Carlo particle transport code with inversion algorithms to achieve trustworthy inferences from muon tracking detectors in complex backgrounds. Previously, Chris was an Royal Society for Edinburgh Enterprise Fellow, a Lecturer in Applied Physics, and at AWE he served as Principal Physicist after directing muon-tomography research on the behalf of UK government stakeholders and international partners. 

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Jon Stone

Head of Location Technology, Waymap

Dr Jon Stone leads development of Waymap’s Visual Positioning System (VPS), a camera-based navigation technology that works without external beacons to enable reliable navigation indoors and underground. His expertise spans machine learning, signal processing, and 3D visual localisation. Jon holds a PhD in Sound and Vibration from the University of Southampton.

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Niki Trigoni

Founder and CSO, Navenio

Professor Niki Trigoni FREng leads the Systems Research Theme at the Oxford Department of Computer Science and is Founder and CSO of Navenio. Her research interests lie at the interface of sensing and machine intelligence for context inference, control and human-machine interaction. She has focused on infrastructure-free indoor localisation and 3D scene understanding for healthcare, mobile autonomy and emergency response. Trigoni has founded and served from 2014-2019 as Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training on Autonomous and Intelligent Machines and Systems. She is also the Founder of Navenio Ltd, a deep tech Oxford spinout on infrastructure free indoor positioning, and a 2020 KPMB Best British Tech Pioneer. In 2020 and 2022, she won the CTO of the Year award at the UK's Women in IT Awards, demonstrating impact from translating positioning tech to improve efficiency in the healthcare sector. 

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Andy Ward

CTO, Ubisense

Dr Andy Ward has designed, built and worked with in-building location systems for nearly thirty years. He studied at Cambridge University, receiving a MA in Computer Science and a PhD in 'Sensor-driven Computing', and led research into location technology at AT&T Laboratories Cambridge from 1998 to 2002. In 2002, he co-founded Ubisense Limited, one of the first companies to commercialize UWB in-building tracking products, and as CTO he now leads technology planning and development for Ubisense. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and a Chartered Engineer, and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s 2015 Silver Medal for his contributions to this field.

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