Tom Bennett - Director Technology Services and Devices Development, EE

Tom has had the good fortune to have worked in mobile telecoms for 22 years. Telecoms is fundamentally a force for good (communicating is rarely a bad thing) and a wonderful industry to work in, where the only constant is change. Tom is accountable for the development of all real-time technology services on the EE network, for the solution architecture, technology test, EE Labs and the Device and Sim technology teams. Currently Tom’s primary focuses are the delivery of new IMS consumer and enterprise services, the roadmap from 4G professional services to 5G, and on the successful delivery of the Emergency Services Network in the UK, setting the benchmark for standardised public safety over LTE.

Kevin Cannon - Director, Tribus-D

Over 30 years of experience in the electronic packaging Industry, supporting developments in Aerospace, Space, Medical and Smart Devices for the 'Internet of Things' sectors. He has skills including assembly manufacturing, equipment selection and validation, lean process engineering, product development and process innovation.

Andrea Cantone - Head of New Products, Cambridge Mechatronics

Andrea is responsible for Business Development at Cambridge Mechatronics (CML), where his focus is the commercialisation of CML's SMA platform technology in the haptics market. Andrea has extensive experience in commercialising cutting edge technologies and innovation. Before joining Cambridge Mechatronics, he worked at Audio Analytic, the world leader in sound recognition, where he was responsible for the company entry into and growth in the IoT space. Prior to that Andrea worked at Cambridge Enterprise - the technology transfer office for the University of Cambridge. Andrea has a PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge where he still mentors postgraduates with an interest in entrepreneurship and technology commercialisation.

Robert Curtis

Robert Curtis is Principal Designer at Dovetailed, responsible for leading the design of nūfood: the world’s first liquid food 3D printer (nufood.io). He has a wealth of knowledge from a decade of working closely with clients in the mobile, FMCG, medical drug delivery and small domestic appliance sectors from formative user research studies through to pre-production. His award-winning work has been recognised by the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and Smart Kitchen Summit; is a named inventor on numerous patents and has had the privilege of speaking at national and international conferences including Mobile World Congress.

Julian Harris - Senior Business Development Manager, Audio Analytic

Despite his youthful looks Julian has 18 years’ of commercial experience in the a wireless technology & consumer electronics industries. As a co-founder of Trigenix in 2000 (sold to Qualcomm for $36M cash) he has managed international partnership programmes, developed detailed strategic plans & managed operational delivery to establish solid foundations on which to deliver growth through innovative, disruptive new business models. Over those 18 years he has covered such diverse and, at the time, progressive technologies as WAP (remember that?) to Fast Computer Vision, Augmented Reality & Advanced Audio solutions. Father of a 10 year-old son, owner of a short, but surprisingly long French Basset and a ridiculously tall Lurcher they can often be seen together wandering the streets of Cambridge catching Pokemon.

Stephen Riches - Director, Tribus-D

Over 30 years of experience in electronics assembly innovation, including copper wire bonding, laser processes, high temperature electronics, MEMS assembly, ruggedised displays and LED lighting. He is a committee member of the UK Chapter of the International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society (IMAPS-UK).

Jenny Tillotson - Founder, eScent

Dr Jenny Tillotson is one of the early visionaries in the wearable sensory technology domain working at the intersection of personalised fragrance, smell communication and experiential fashion. She spent over 15 years at Central Saint Martin researching 'Sensory Fashion' and is the driving force behind eScent®, a transformative technology for emotion-based scent dispersal. She holds a PhD in Printed Textiles from the Royal College of Art and a degree in Fashion Communication from Central Saint Martins. Tillotson is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, an Associate of the British Society of Perfumery, a Winston Churchill Fellow and a Visiting Scholar in Dept of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge. She is a named inventor on awarded wearable scent technology and smart fabric patents and has worked with Google, International Flavours & Fragrances, Philips, The North Face, Cambridge Consultants and Adeline Andre Couture. eScent® was recently acknowledged as an "Up & Coming" Innovation by the TransTech Community and won 'Best Innovation Award' at the Wearable Technology in 2016.

David Wood - Principal, Delta Wisdom, Chair, London Futurists

David Wood was a pioneer of the smartphone industry and is now a full-time futurist writer, consultant, and publisher. In 1998 he co-founded Symbian, the creator of the world’s first successful smartphone operating system. Software written by his teams was included in half a billion smartphones over the following years, from companies such as Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, Panasonic, Fujitsu, and Sony Ericsson. He previously spent ten years at UK-based mobile computing innovator Psion PLC, and subsequently three years as CTO of Accenture Mobility, where he co-led the company’s Mobility Health business initiative. He is the author or lead editor of eleven books, including The Singularity Principles, Vital Foresight, Smartphones and Beyond, The Abolition of Aging, and Sustainable Superabundance. As Chair of London Futurists, he has hosted 300 public events on futurist and technoprogressive topics since 2008. As Principal of Delta Wisdom, he works with organisations around the world to inject urgency into discussions of future scenarios and to anticipate forthcoming exponential disruptions. He is a fellow of the IEET and a fellow of the RSA. He has a triple first class mathematics degree from Cambridge and undertook doctoral research in the Philosophy of Science regarding the implications of quantum physics. He has an honorary Doctorate in Science from Westminster University, awarded in recognition of his services to the smartphone industry.  

Nadia Aziz - Innovation Consultant, Unbounded Future Ltd

Nadia is an Evangelist of emerging technologies with an expertise in AR & VR and IoT technologies. She has advised C-level executives in Telecom and Media organisations for digital transformation and M&A projects over more than a decade. While being a SIG Champion of Future Devices and Technologies at Cambridge Wireless, she has recently co-founded Unbounded Future, a Deeptech consulting firm based in London. Previously Nadia led Emerging Technologies at NTT Data UK where she supervised R&D and innovation in Augmented (AR) & Virtual Reality (VR), AI, and IoT. Nadia is a supporter of Women in STEM initiatives and is a mentor at the University College London (UCL) IXN programme. She is an industry advisor to IoTerra, a USA-based B2B marketplace for IoT products and was a co-producer for the GIANT Health Event.

Muhammad Chughtai - Senior Research Specialist (Electronics & Electrical Engineering), Beko

I am a seasoned senior technology and engineering consultant with over a decade of multinational experience in AI & Robotics, MedTech, and thermodynamics. My career seamlessly blends corporate discipline with start-up agility, informed by a deep understanding of system dynamics and a holistic perspective. My expertise centres on empowering companies to gain a competitive edge through innovation, successful solution commercialization & partnerships, and strategic business development, all while upholding industry standards. In addition to my engineering expertise, I hold a PhD in the field, complemented by an MBAE. This dual qualification positions me uniquely at the intersection of advanced engineering and educational dynamics.

Zahid Ghadialy - Principal Analyst & Consultant, 3G4G

Zahid is a technologist with a deep understanding of architecting world-class mobile products and solutions. With over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry in various roles, he has been an evangelist for mobile and wireless technologies. Over the years he has accumulated a vast following on his blogs and social networks with simple explainer posts and videos.

His 3G4G blogs are widely read where he looks at different aspects of mobile technology and especially 5G and 6G nowadays, including the architecture, deployments, use cases, applications, etc. His YouTube channel is also very popular where he explains many new features expected as part of 5G in the future. While his style and content is unique, he also references many industry publications and provides slides that are very useful to view online.

He is also very active on Twitter under his @3G4GUK brand helping disseminate the benefits of 5G and why 5G will be needed in the long run. He covers a very wide portfolio of 5G related information that is hard to find otherwise.

Until recently, Zahid was a Senior Director looking at Technology & Innovation Strategy in Parallel Wireless. As a brand ambassador, he represented the company in various Open RAN discussions and also created tutorials on Open RAN and O-RAN which are being used as reference for new starters on the topic.

David Roberts - CTO - Special Projects, Cambridge Wireless, Founder, Jabooh Software

David is a technology leader with over 25 years experience working in the hi-tech arena. He has recently completed a successful project for ghd in conjunction with CW where he carried out the role of System Architect and facilitator.  Prior to this he worked in in the C-IoT space where he ran a multi-national R&D department that developed silicon and software designed for the burgeoning IoT market. He was also responsible for driving an agile transformation programme and assisting the organisation with their integration into a large Chinese multi-national telecoms company. Having started his career as a software developer working for BT and Acorn Computers, he went on to hold senior roles in a number of world-class organisations such as Symbian, Cambridge University and Citrix in the areas of Software Development, Project Management, Product Management, Research, Consultancy and Architecture. His background includes leading and developing teams involved in the creation of large-scale integrated hardware and software products, web-based services and CE devices. He is also highly experienced in large-scale agile development practices, agile coaching/transformation and creating and executing strategies for increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of organisations.

Charles Sturman - CEO, TechWorks

As CEO at TechWorks, Charles is driving collaboration between Deep Tech and Semiconductor companies, Academia and Government in order to promote the sector and grow business opportunities for UK companies.

Previously, Charles was responsible for International Business & Marketing at HiSilicon (Huawei’s chipset business) based in Cambridge UK, with responsibility for product strategy, go-to-market and business development in IoT, edge and smart devices fields. Prior to this he led u-blox’ activities in the fast moving consumer IoT segment (wearables, smart-home and entertainment) following the acquisition of the ARM Software Radio spin-out Cognovo, where we was founder and executive VP Sales & Marketing. Charles has held various positions in system design, business development and product marketing within Acorn Computers, TTPCom, Motorola and ARM.