Steve Baker - Managing Director, Fen Technology

Steve leads Fen Technology, an engineering business which supports both start-ups and multinationals to deliver new, technology-enabled products. He is an electronic engineer by training and his work has spanned software defined radio for test instrumentation, a decade-and-more of cellular handset technologies, IoT services, and satellite communications. Across a variety of technical and commercial roles he has delivered hardware, software and service propositions. Out of hours, Steve is likely to be found either refining his sourdough technique (with a knowing nod to the nominative determinism), running off the sourdough-derived carbs or improving his (limited) double bass skills.

Will Beech - Senior Manager, Technology, Deloitte LLP

Phil Claridge - Founder, Mandrel Systems

Phil Claridge is a ‘virtual CTO’ for hire within Mandrel Systems covering end-to-end systems. Currently having fun and helping others with large-scale AI systems integration, country-wide large scale big-data processing, hands-on IoT technology (from sensor hardware design, through LoRa integration to back end systems), and advanced city information modelling. Supporting companies with M&A ‘exit readiness’, due-diligence and on advisory boards. Past roles include: CTO, Chief Architect, Labs Director, and Technical Evangelist for Geneva/Convergys (telco), Arieso/Viavi (geolocation), and Madge (networking). Phil’s early career was in electronics, and still finds it irresistible to swap from Powerpoint to a soldering iron and a compiler to produce proof-of-concepts when required.

Peter Cochrane - Co-Founder, Cochrane Associates

Paul Copping - CTO, Fawley Waterside, CEO, Maxathon Ltd

Paul Copping has had a career spanning software  telecoms, transport and smart cities. He is currently Chief Technology Officer at Fawley Waterside,  a new build "intelligent merchant city" on the Solent waterfront and backing on to the New Forest National Park.  With 1500 homes and a large commercial and Innovation campus, this development has the opportunity to implement best practice in every phase of its design, build an operations. 

Sally Epstein - Machine Learning Engineer, Cambridge Consultants

Simon Fletcher - CEO, Real Wireless

Simon joined Real Wireless in January 2016 as Chief Technology Officer, taking overall technical and innovation strategy responsibility across the company. He is a member of the UK5G AB, co-chair of the International WG, and member of the Climate WG. His long-standing association with the UK innovation eco-system through roles such as Director of mVCE and the Innovate-UK ICT-KTN brings a wealth of practical knowledge on open innovation to accelerate product and services delivery. Simon spent his formative years in telecoms infrastructure systems and product development. In NEC Corporation he played a key role in the formation of Joint Ventures for development of 3G and 4G products and established a core team that developed the first-generation of technology for 4G systems culminating in a Steering Board position in the LTE SAE Trials Initiative (LSTI). In recent times he has directed projects on future cities, the application 5G and IoT in industry verticals with an event horizon towards 2030. His long participation in Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI) and then directing Real Wireless engagement in H2020 and the 2016 NIC study on Future Comms infrastructure brings great foresight on a range of architectural evolutions underway in 5G architectures, in particular for Open RAN and Diversification. He is a CW Small Cell SIG Champion, and in February 2022 the Small Cell Forum (SCF) appointed Simon as their Chief Strategy Officer, drawing on 25 years direct industry experience and work as an advisor to governments, regulators and big business.

Raj Gawera - VP & Managing Director, Samsung Cambridge (SCSC)

Raj has over 20 years of experience in short range and wireless communications technology R&D, business development and marketing. Raj was part of initial IEEE 802.11 team to define first WLAN standard in 1996 – a technology which has now shipped over 5bn units. Raj also helped pioneer the first 3G data transmissions working with Motorola and others to demonstrate one of the first video calls at the 3GSM show in 1998 – many years before 3G licences were awarded. He has also been awarded a number of patents including short range wireless technologies. Raj was a founder member of startup UbiNetics (1999), which successfully exited in 2005 for over $120m USD. As part of that deal, Raj joined CSR and ultimately took the role of VP Marketing where he was part of the team that acquired SiRF Technologies for $136m (2009) to add GPS technology to CSR portfolio. More recently in 2012, he helped sell CSR’s handset business to Samsung in a deal worth $310m for 310 staff to form the SCSC division. As part of that deal, Raj took up the role of VP Marketing responsible for defining future wireless products. In 2014, Raj was promoted to head up the SCSC division leading the silicon and software development for Samsung’s connectivity solutions.

Stephen Hamilton - Corporate Finance Partner, Mills & Reeve LLP

Stephen Hamilton is a partner at Mills & Reeve; he helps businesses to achieve their commercial objectives, focuses on corporate finance for companies and other commercial clients. Stephen has significant experience in advising in relation to capital markets (both main market and AIM) including fundraisings, initial public offerings, mergers & acquisitions and corporate restructurings. Recent work includes an £80m takeover offer, several AIM fundraisings, a £28m recommended takeover code offer structured as a scheme of arrangement, two £300m+ bond issues, the £100m dual track trade sale and AIM IPO for an advanced manufacturing company. He is a member of the Quoted Companies Alliance Legal Technical Committee. Stephen also has an interest in the laws relating to the testing and use of autonomous vehicles. I have consulted with general counsel from major automotive manufacturers and suppliers, responded to calls for evidence from the UK Government, have been quoted by the media and have been invited to discuss the subject at the House of Lords.

Nick Hunn - CTO, WiFore Consulting

For the past thirty years Nick has been closely involved with short range wireless and communications, designing technology that helps to bring mobility to products, particularly in the areas of telematics, M2M, IoT, wearables, smart energy and mobile health. He is closely involved with the Bluetooth SIG, the Continua Alliance and other medical and wireless standards bodies. He is the author of 'The Essentials of Short Range Wireless' - a book attempting to explain the application of wireless technology to product developers.

Noel Hurley - Arm

Noel Hurley (ARM)

Oliver Kibblewhite - Rewind

Muki Kulhan - Chief Innovation Officer, Executive XR Producer & Creative Technologist, Muki International

Matthew Larbey - Managing Director UK, EdgeConneX

Edge Data Centers®. Where you Ask For It. EdgeConneX operates and is the pioneer of world class Edge Data Centers®, bringing Cloud, Content and Capacity to where you need it, within close proximity to your customers. EdgeConneX can scale the data center capacity to perfectly align demand and future supply. We can deliver new capacity in less than 6 months on average. Our speed to market is unrivaled with a global footprint of 30 existing data centers across 27 markets and expanding. The custom wholesale model means that EdgeConneX can provide what you want, where you want it, when you want it to support the growing data center demands of today.

Ian Lewis - Director of Infrastructure Investment & the Adaptive City Programme, University of Cambridge

Karen Livingstone - Director of Strategic Partnerships and Industry Engagement, EAHSN

James Marks - DoubleMe

Geoff McCormick

Geoff has worked as a business consultant in the design industry for over 10 years. In that time he has worked with some of the world's most famous and successful designers, where his role was to help designers, companies and brands to try and maximise the commercial effectiveness of design. His experience covers every populated continent and a diverse range of sectors, including developing a mobile petrol retail station, an interior design system for VIP aircraft, hydrogen powered vehicles, packaging strategies for FMCG brands and innovation programmes utilising Asian sourcing. It is this breadth of experience that he values most. Common across all of his clients and projects is the desire to create truly unique experiences that occupy a space in peoples' hearts and minds.

Edward Miller - Specialist in Interactive Imagery, Independent

Robert Milner - Chief Technology Officer, ghd Cambridge

Ali Nicholl - Head of Engagement, Iotics

Ali is the Head of Engagement at Iotic, working across customers, partners and Iotic Ecosystem. Ali is focused on the co-creation of transformative services and solutions, that meet genuine business challenges today and are future flexible for as yet undefined futures. Leading the Sales and Marketing activity at Iotic, Ali is passionate about enabling and empowering individuals and organisations with Digital Twins and the secure interoperability they enable. Amy Webb noted that “The future doesn’t simply arrive fully formed overnight, but emerges step by step”. The vast potential that can be unlocked by enabling things, systems and individuals to share, discover and interact with one another must be married to clear understanding of business benefits and the clarity that those first steps can be taken with confidence.

Priya Prakash - Founder/CEO, D4SC - Design for Social Change

Priya Prakash is designer-founder of London based award-winning D4SC - Design for Social Change Ltd -The applied urban innovation studio develops collaborative products and services combining human and machine intelligence to co-create smarter cities with people. Changify #SmarterStreets D4SC’s intelligent people- powered decision making platform to improve public infrastructure got awarded by Innovate UK to pilot in Plymouth with Amey Ferrovial. It resulted in reducing average road inspection costs by 22%, increasing citizen satisfaction and contractor responsiveness by 19.8% and is being scaled across UK and Asia. Prakash is on ‘Tech City Insider 100’, IBM’s People for Smarter Cities and featured in FT, Sunday Times, BBC, Wired, Guardian and the Queen’s 2017 Honours list for award winning work in Chinese smart cities using data to improve public safety. Prior to D4SC, Priya was Head of Mobile Phone User Experience at Nokia where she led the global design team to launch affordable smart phones - Nokia Asha in 144 countries. At BBC, she was lead-designer and co-inventor of iPlayer with joint patents.

Gareth Presch - Founder & CEO, World Health Innovations Summit

Tony Sammut - Vodafone

Mike Short CBE - Chief Architect, Satellite Applications Catapult, Chair of the Advisory Board, UKTIN

Dr Mike Short CBE, after 30 years in telecommunications with Cellnet / BT / O2 and Telefonica, joined the Department for International Trade (DIT) in December 2017 as the Department’s first Chief Scientific Adviser (now called Dept of Business and Trade). Since March 2023 he has been pursuing a portfolio career around innovation and research largely in telecommunications including as Chief Architect at the Satellite Applications Catapult and Distinguished Visitor at NPL.

Mike led the Science and Engineering profession and advised DIT on science, engineering and technology. He supported DIT on the technical aspects of trade, inward investment and international engineering collaboration, and worked with the UK’s research, innovation and academic communities to boost technology and engineering exports. He also represented DIT on many cross HMG committees such as Telecoms, Space, Health and Quantum, and on overseas delegations such as Mobile World Congress 2023 , CES and Web Summit 2022. He was an active member of GoScience CSA activities and a Board member on Innovate UK for 4 years to Q1 2023.

Mike has 4 decades of experience in electronics and telecommunications. This included a role as Vice President of Telefonica, the parent company of the O2 mobile phone network to the end of 2016. Since 1987, he has managed the launch of 2G (GSM) and 3G mobile technologies in the UK, helped win mobile licenses overseas, established an EU office in Brussels, and later led international research (including 4G / 5G), innovation and standards for Telefonica Europe. He also was the lead contact with the UK / EU Research programmes and International Standards, and managed the engagement with UK Universities. During this period he ran trials for Mobile TV, Smart metering, Driverless cars, and IoT.

He has also led the development and collaboration in areas such as Digital health, IoT, and cybersecurity including active participation in PETRAS and iSense multi year programmes linked to key Universities.  His career includes the promotion of international technical standards in mobile and digital technology. He is a former Chairman of the Global GSM Association, the UK Mobile Data Association, and was President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology in 2011/2012. Amongst other Board roles he has sat on the Boards of ETSI , Tech UK , Innovate UK, UK 5G and UK Telecomms Innovation Network Advisory Board.  He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Surrey and Strathclyde. He holds honorary doctorates from Brunel and Warwick Universities amongst others, and was honoured with a CBE in 2012 for his services to the mobile industry.

Ian Simmons - Vice President Business Development, Magna International

Ian Simmons has served as Vice President Business Development, Corporate Engineering and R&D since 2012. Simmons is responsible for identifying and developing new business opportunities with start-ups, universities, venture capital companies and entrepreneurs. As a result of his work in the last 12-15 months, Magna has entered into partnerships with more than 15 companies and invested over $90 million.

Simmons joined Magna in 2003 as Executive Director Sales and Program Management for Magna Steyr North America. In 2008 he was promoted to General Manager, Magna Steyr North America and in 2010 this role was expanded to President of Magna Steyr North America.

Simmons, who has worked in the automotive industry for more than 35 years, began his career in 1976 with student training at the Ford Motor Company in the U.K. Upon leaving Ford in 1982 he undertook engineering assignments in Europe with Volkswagen and DAF Trucks.

In 1990 Simmons held the position of Manager of Business Development for Hawtal Whiting Plc. in the U.K., where he was responsible for sales activities throughout Europe. In 1993 he accepted a transfer to the company’s U.S. operation to become Vice President of Sales. In 1995 Simmons became Vice President of Operations for the Hawtal Whiting technical center in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Simmons returned to the U.K. in 1997 as Director of Business Development for TWR Ltd. supporting TWR Group sales and operational tasks for the technical services division. He subsequently returned to the U.S. in 1999 and joined Porsche Engineering Services as Head of Sales in 2000. Simmons holds dual U.S. / U.K. citizenship.

Simmons has been a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers for over 20 years.

Rachel Skinner - UK Head of Development & Vice President , WSP

Ian Stewart - GM Performance Solutions, Finning UK and Ireland

Ian joined Finning UK (Ltd) in 2017 as GM Performance Solutions. He leads Finning Managed Services (FMS) and SITECH with a focus on transformation of Finnings Performance solutions organisation and solution capability. 

With a background of Innovation value creation and strategy in Digital Technologies across Computing, Telecoms and Machine to Machine solutions, Ian has led technical and commercial teams in a range of digital transformation and new business creation spanning a wide range of enterprise sectors and critical national infrastructure sectors globally. 

Ian has worked in the Digital and Telecommunications sector for over 20 years and formerly held senior Marketing, Product and Commercial positions at Arqiva, O2, Telefonica, Microsoft, Sony Ericsson and Blackberry, with leadership responsibilities for Proposition, Portfolio Management, Partnerships and Sales. Ian holds an MBA from Henley Management School. 

Robert Tansley - Investment Director, Cambridge Innovation Capital

Stephen Temple - Visting Professor, Independent

Prof Stephen Temple CBE is Chair of Cluster 2 (long term spectrum strategy) of the Spectrum Policy Forum, a member of the IET Communications Policy Committee, visiting professor to the University of Surrey 5G>>6GIC and technical secretary to its Strategy Advisory Board

Stanley Wang - Institute for Information Industry

William Webb FREng FIET FIEEE - CTO, Access Partnership

William is CTO at Access Partnership. He was one of the founding directors of Neul, a company developing machine-to-machine technologies and networks, which was formed at the start of 2011 and subsequently sold to Huawei and became CEO of the Weightless SIG, a body standardizing IoT technology. Prior to this William was a Director at Ofcom where he managed a team providing technical advice and performing research. He has worked for a range of communications consultancies and spent three years providing strategic management across Motorola’s entire communications portfolio, based in Chicago. He was IET President 2014-2015.

William has published 17 books, 100 papers, and 18 patents. He is a Visiting Professor at Southampton University, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the IEEE and the IET. He has been awarded multiple honorary doctorates by the UK’s leading universities and in 2018 was awarded the IET’s prestigious Mountbatten Medal for technology entrepreneurship.

Peter Whale - Founder & CEO, Vision Formers

Peter is Founder & CEO of Vision Formers, the specialist consultancy that supports and mentors leaders of visionary technology businesses get product to market and turn ideas into reality.

Vision Formers works with start-ups and scale-ups, providing significant expertise in accelerating business growth through a focus on developing a robust product strategy, growing and coaching product and development teams, and providing operational excellence. Peter has a long track record of conceiving, developing and marketing successful technology-based solutions, deployed at scale, globally. Innovative products Peter has brought to market in digital, cloud, AI, consumer electronics and telecommunications have been used by countless millions of people on a daily basis globally, badged by the world’s leading digital and technology brands.

Peter also works with Digital Catapult as Programme Manager for UKTIN, working with partners and stakeholders to deliver UKTIN’s mission to transform the UK telecoms innovation ecosystem, capitalising on the country’s strengths in technology, academia, and entrepreneurialism, while positioning it for growth as new opportunities emerge in the industry.

Peter is a board member of CW (Cambridge Wireless), a Fellow of the IET, a Chartered Engineer, and a member of the Association of Business Mentors.

Pete Wood - Head of DesignSpark Experience, RS Components

Pete Wood (RS Components)