Agenda 2022

Ecosystem CTO, IBM Technology

Sharon’s mission is transforming industry with technology; her purpose is to make a difference, for the better.  She is Technical Director and CTO in IBM UKI’s Ecosystem business, helping IBM’s Services partners succeed.

Recently, Sharon was IBM’s CTO for Global Government and she has 20+ years of experience working in outsourcing, consulting, and sales, across multiple sectors and diverse technologies. You’ll often find her on stage championing the positive impact of technology, shaping its role in making industry successful, and advocating for responsible technical advancement, especially when it comes to AI. She is also a Chartered IT Professional and BCS Fellow.

Sharon is a catalyst for change in inclusion through BCSWomen, formerly through Scotland Women in Technology, and other activity, and is a published co-author on the subject. Sharon was awarded MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in June 2018.

Sharon is a Trustee of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT and non-executive Director of CENSIS Technology Solutions.

Paul is an entrepreneurial technologist with a substantial track record for applying innovation across multiple market sectors spanning academia, government, SMEs and international PLCs.

Paul’s early career was with UK MoD, then with QinetiQ where he held a number of leadership roles CEO of QinetiQ Inc. Subsequently, Paul has founded and ran an SME and then was the inaugural Executive Director Innovation and Investment at the UK Defence Solutions Centre. He joined CENSIS in 2019 where he has been pivotal in the development and implementation of digital solutions across the public and private sectors in Scotland.

Paul’s business skills include leadership, substantial international P&L experience, capital raising and realising value from technology.

Paul is a member of the Board at South of Scotland Enterprise, Scotland’s Scotland’s enterprise agency for Dumfries and Galloway and the Scottish Borders. Earlier in 2022 the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) appointed him to its Science Engineering and Technology Board (SETB). The SETB is responsible for identifying and championing new research challenges at the cutting edge of engineering and physical sciences for future investment.

Paul is a co-founder of the Smart Things Accelerator Centre, a dedicated Scottish IoT accelerator for SMEs, scale up and start up companies.

Our Keynote speaker at the 7th CENSIS Technology Summit will be Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM’s Distinguished Engineer for the Internet of Things, Master Inventor, Quantum Technical Ambassador and all round IoT evangelist. Andy is the former CTO for IBM in the UK and Ireland.

IoT is at the heart of everything Andy does, and he has worked on Internet of Things technologies for over 20 years, long before the term came into common use. A holder of more than 40 patents, one of Andy’s most significant achievements is his invention of MQTT, an open-source communications protocol that offers a scalable and cost-effective way to connect devices over the internet, making it perfect for the Internet of Things. Originally designed for the oil and gas industry, this ISO-standard protocol is now widely used across all application areas of IoT. It’s also used by social media companies, so if you’ve ever used Facebook Messenger, you’ve used MQTT.

Andy’s passion for invention and innovation began at the tender age of four when he asked for a computer for Christmas – a time when computers were roughly the size of your living room. He had to settle for the Ladybird book of computers instead but reading this kicked off his life-long fascination with technology innovation. By eight, he already developed his first ‘remote telemetry system’ to help his mum save time at home.

Outside of the workplace, Andy has numerous personal IoT projects on the go. These include managing his own 16th century smart home, bringing dinosaurs back to life, making sure antelopes stay warm at night, and making the Isle of Wight ferries tweet – the latter beginning as an IoT hack to kill time while waiting for a ferry that then took a quite unexpected turn.

Andy holds a BSc in Computer Science and Mathematics and a PhD in parallel computing from the University of East Anglia. He’s a visiting professor at the University of Newcastle, an honorary professor at the University of East Anglia, and an adjunct professor at the University of Southampton. He’s a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and makes regular media appearances and gives conference talks about IoT.

Please register to join us on the day for Andy’s address ‘Innovation begins at home’.

Monica Soriano is the Senior News Editor of the BBC Technology and Innovation Story Team.  She is the first female editor of the BBC News technology channel, Click, and is also in charge of the BBC’s technology news coverage.   Monica has led the transition of the team from London to Glasgow in Scotland and is committed to continuing the high standard of global tech reporting which Click has a strong reputation for, as well as broadening its scope to cover more stories which matter to younger and diverse audiences.  Her key priorities are to highlight how tech is changing and improving people’s lives for the better, in areas such as health and wellbeing, education and worklife, and sustainability.  Monica has over 20 years of experience working for the BBC across TV, radio and online platforms. She spent most of her career working in London but came back to live in Scotland in 2015.

Richard Marshall has over 30 years of experience in the field of software design and innovation. His background includes over 18 years as an entrepreneur, where he built and sold three different software development companies in the areas of mobile app design, web design and requirements management. It also includes over five years as a Gartner analyst, where he led a team that focused on global application design and development trends and where he served as a vocal champion of the emergence of enterprise mobile app technologies.

Richard’s expertise covers numerous areas including, mobile, low code, web tools, AI and the future of work. He has lectured extensively on these topics and published numerous white papers, articles and reports through the years. Richard holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh.

Richard’s presentation: Building digital resilience

Society has become totally dependent on digital services, and those services have been built on the foundation of a the assumption of ready and continuing supply of electronic components. While disruptions to that supply are well documented, the full impact is less well understood, and long-term solutions even less. We need to form an framework for achieving digital resilience at all levels, from parts to people, to ensure future stability. This presentation proposes a model for such a framework.

Dane founded iOpt in April 2016. For the last 20 years Dane has been working to help asset owners and managers to maintain and run their assets more efficiently. Those assets have included everything from Aston Martins and 737 aircraft engines through to ATM machines and electricity networks.

Now Dane and iOpt help the owners, managers and tenants of social housing properties protect their homes and their health through monitoring the environment and various assets and systems in housing.

Dane’s presentation: Helping tackle the cost of living crisis using the Internet of Things – a CENSIS case study

Dr Poonam Malik, FRSE, FRSB is an entrepreneurial business strategist academic leader and an investor in innovation. She is Head of Investments at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, responsible for strategic leadership of the university’s enhanced investments from entrepreneurial and commercialisation activities, focused on innovative startups, spinouts and spinin companies, solving global societal challenges.

A GlobalScot, Scottish Enterprise Board Member – Climate Champion, Skills Development Scotland Board Director and Firstport, Social Enterprise, Trustee, Dr Malik has held leadership roles across public, private, higher education and social enterprise sectors.

Poonam has extensive experience of working in startups, investment, innovation, enterprise, research and governance internationally. Poonam brings over 25 years’ expertise in technology and business sectors in life sciences and health – biotech, digital and medical sciences research and innovation. She is passionate about entrepreneurship, impact, equality, diversity and inclusive  values, and climate change/net zero. She is a syndicate investor with Investing Women Angels, and Chair, NED, Board-level adviser/consultant and mentor for technology startups.

Poonam has held academic positions at the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Cumbria/Lancaster and in India. She is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and Royal Society of Biology (FRSB). Poonam holds an MBA (with Distinction) in strategy and leadership from the University of Edinburgh Business School, a PhD in Biomedical Sciences/Virology from the University of Glasgow, as well as an MSc degree in Biotechnology & a BSc in Chemistry & Zoology from India.

Growing and scaling an IoT business

On the day, Poonam will chair the morning panel session on growing and scaling an IoT business. In preparing for this, CENSIS was pleased to work with team at the Innovation World Cup to bring together four senior figures from IoT businesses – two from Scotland and two from mainland Europe – to discuss the challenges, opportunities, learnings and rewards each has faced in establishing and scaling up their company.

Martin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sensoneo. He is a senior Executive Manager with great experience in the management of complex IT projects, programs, and integrations. Martin studied Automation and Robotics and since 1997, he worked in numerous IT & project management positions for recognized companies such as Ability, IDSScheer, Quimonda, Infosys, and others, and in 2012 he founded his own IT company. In 2014, his interest turned into new technologies driving the digital transformation of waste management. In 2017, he founded Sensoneo to revolutionize the way waste is managed. Martin is very passionate about new technologies, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

Sensoneo is a global enterprise-grade smart waste management solutions provider that enables cities, businesses, and countries to manage their waste efficiently, lower their environmental footprint, and improve the quality of services. Through its innovative smart waste management technologies that are all results of in-house R&D, Sensoneo helps customers to cope with the biggest challenges in today’s world of waste management – lack of efficiency and transparency. As an outcome, the solution enables the customers to achieve a 30 – 63% reduction of waste collection routes and 97% accuracy on actual waste production. Sensoneo’s solutions have attracted customers around the world, and the solution has been installed in more than 70 countries on 5 continents.

Growing and scaling an IoT business

On the day, Martin will be a guest on our morning panel session on growing and scaling an IoT business, chaired by Poonam Malik. In preparing for this, CENSIS was pleased to work with team at the Innovation World Cup to bring together four senior figures from IoT businesses – two from Scotland and two from mainland Europe – to discuss the challenges, opportunities, learnings and rewards each has faced in establishing and scaling up their company.

Dr Marie Berthuel holds a PhD in Biochemistry with a strong focus on biosensing and immunosensing. She is a part of the co-founding team of BeFC (Bioenzymatic Fuel Cells) based in France, and currently holds the role of Product Manager. Sitting at the interface between clients, suppliers and the R&D team, she is responsible for refining product specifications. She also leads on marketing and communications strategy, a position she has held since her first day at BeFC.

Launched in 2020, BeFC is committed to providing an eco-friendly energy solution to enable the next generation of low-environmental impact electronic solutions. The company is founded on decades of pioneering biofuel cell research, pivoted towards emerging markets in the packaging, wearable and single-use medical markets.

With a team of world class engineers, scientists, and problem-solvers, BeFC is developing an organic and eco-friendly energy solution for the next generation of smart and sustainable electronics. The company was the winner of the 12th Innovation World Cup in IoT and Healthcare.

Growing and scaling an IoT business

On the day, Marie will be a guest on our morning panel session on growing and scaling an IoT business, chaired by Poonam Malik. In preparing for this, CENSIS was pleased to work with team at the Innovation World Cup to bring together four senior figures from IoT businesses – two from Scotland and two from mainland Europe – to discuss the challenges, opportunities, learnings and rewards each has faced in establishing and scaling up their company.

Allan Cannon is the co-founder and CEO of UK-based spacetech scale-up Krucial (formerly R3-IoT), and has a passion for creating technology that solves real problems.

Setting the commercial direction across the business, Allan leads a highly skilled team of technical, engineering, operations, and sales professionals. He also led the company’s recent $4.3m seed round, securing UK and North American investors, has more than doubled headcount in the last 12 months, and is now focused on global expansion in 2022.

Allan is highly experienced in delivering complex multi-million defence and aerospace projects and spent more than 10 years’ in the defence and aerospace industry across advanced technology, R&D, design and operations.

Allan is a keen advocate for the next generation of entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and leaders, and currently sits on the board of CodeClan, a digital bootcamp accelerator.

Growing and scaling an IoT business

On the day, Allan will be a guest on our morning panel session on growing and scaling an IoT business, chaired by Poonam Malik. In preparing for this, CENSIS was pleased to work with team at the Innovation World Cup to bring together four senior figures from IoT businesses – two from Scotland and two from mainland Europe – to discuss the challenges, opportunities, learnings and rewards each has faced in establishing and scaling up their company.

A high-growth entrepreneur and physicist, Dave Hughes has over 12 years’ experience researching ultrasound for medical, dental and industrial applications. During his time as Research Fellow at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS), Dave invented Novosound’s core IP that led to the creation of Novosound in April 2018 – the first spin-out company to emerge from UWS.

Dave Hughes has developed from an academic to a successful company director, overseeing the technical direction and vision of Novosound. Under his leadership, Novosound has grown rapidly to become an award-winning global business, working across a wide range of diverse industry sectors and markets including oil & gas, aerospace, energy and medical. Dave holds a visiting professorship at UWS and was named Institute of Directors (IoD) Scotland Director of the Year 2020 in the start-up category.

Since 2018 Novosound has grown from six people to 30+. Key customers have included international energy company Uniper and, in the aerospace sector, BAE Systems and GE Aviation. More recently Novosound has taken exciting steps in the wearable and healthcare sector with work in the dental imaging market and a digital healthcare R&D project with a Nasdaq-listed tech group.

Growing and scaling an IoT business

On the day, Dave will be a guest on our morning panel session on growing and scaling an IoT business, chaired by Poonam Malik. In preparing for this, CENSIS was pleased to work with team at the Innovation World Cup to bring together four senior figures from IoT businesses – two from Scotland and two from mainland Europe – to discuss the challenges, opportunities, learnings and rewards each has faced in establishing and scaling up their company.

Lynne Baillie’s research interest is in the area of human‐computer interaction (HCI) – that’s the study and subsequent improvement of human interaction with technology, and the development and evaluation of novel interactive technologies, particularly robots.

Prof Baillie is Director of the Interactive and Trustworthy Technologies Research Group at Heriot-Watt University, researching how people interact with technology, and the impacts that technology has on the population in terms of convenience, usability, performance and security. She is also the National Robotarium lead for human-robot interaction (HRI), assistive living and health. Based in a purposed-built facility in Edinburgh opening in September 2022, the National Robotarium is a world-leading institute for robotics and artificial intelligence, boasting unrivalled facilities to explore collaborative interaction between humans, robots and their environments.

Lynne has been involved in the user-centred design of home, mobile and rehabilitation technologies for over fifteen years. Her work has attracted funding from UK research councils, the EU, and national and local government, as well as international companies such as Siemens and Microsoft, and the charity sector including Heritage Lottery Fund. She is the author of more than 100 peer reviewed scientific papers.

For more information on Lynne’s work please visit her research group’s project page at https://ittgroup.org/projects.

Lynne’s presentation: How robots will help us in the future 

The presentation will discuss some current projects from the National Robotarium – from underwater robotics to social robots for assistive living and health. Lynne will also talk about the National Robotarium building that opens in September 2022 and the centre’s approach to collaborative working with industry, governments, NHS and the third sector.

Falk is CTO and co-founder at Utopi, a Scottish based technology business. Having worked for over 20 years in IT, telecommunications and IoT, he has successfully designed, developed and launched services and solutions across a constantly changing technology landscape, combining keen commercial awareness with a deep understanding of the markets he operates in.

Utopi combines prop tech and climate tech, having developed an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) Software as a Service (SaaS) platform for multi-tenant real estate, as well as its own IoT multisensor and the Utopi resident app. Integrating multiple relevant data sources provides unprecedented actionable insight as well as helping to improve ESG performance. Utopi already operates across the UK and Europe, with plans to expand further afield in the near future.

Mark is a keen champion of innovation and collaboration for infrastructure and he is particularly interested in the transformation of the built environment, including: systems-thinking, digital transformation, connected digital twins, data infrastructure, low-carbon sustainable solutions and the circular economy.

Mark was the Head of the National Digital Twin programme and he contributed to the leadership of this ambitious programme to enable an ecosystem of connected digital twins across the built environment.  For five years, Mark was Mott MacDonald’s Chief Technical Officer and was accountable to the Executive Board for technical excellence across the Group.

As Strategic Advisor for Mott MacDonald Digital Ventures, Mark provides strategy-level advice to key clients on digital transformation, connected digital twins and broader industry transformation.

Mark’s presentation: The future is connected – ecosystems of connected digital twins

Ecosystems of connected digital twins promise enormous value for the people of the UK. They are an essential enabler for achieving net zero, climate resilience and the circular economy. They will help to increase the performance of our existing built environment and improve the delivery of new infrastructure assets. This approach is supported by infrastructure policy from the National Infrastructure Strategy, through the Construction Playbook to the groundbreaking Transforming Infrastructure Performance: Roadmap to 2030.

It is very clear that the digital twin market is taking off, but making connections between digital needs more than that. It is all about interoperability – enabling secure resilient information flow across organisational and sector boundaries – but this requires a level of data quality and consistency that the market alone cannot initiate; it requires government-level leadership to create the conditions that will enable the connected digital twin market to develop and thrive.

This presentation will: describe what we mean by ecosystems of connected digital twins, summarise what we’ve learnt so far and indicate what is happening to develop this now.

John Crawford is Professor in Strategy and Technology Management and a theoretical biologist with a research focus on systems approaches. He has active programmes of research on the integrated behaviour of the soil-plant-microbe system, food system optimisation; and in the application of AI in systems biology including tissue- and organ-level modelling of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Prof Crawford was previously Science Director at Rothamsted Research in the UK, and complex systems programme lead in the executive team for the University of Sydney’s $0.5B Charles Perkins Centre, linking sustainable agriculture, food, diet and health. He was the Academic Champion for the UKRI’s successful bid to the UK Government for the £90M Industry Strategy Challenge “Transforming Food Production” programme and remains on the Steering Board.

In addition to academic work, John has undertaken consultancies with major multinational companies at the strategic level including supporting one of the largest acquisitions and mergers in history.

Transforming the Scottish food system

John will chair our second panel session of the day on ‘Transforming the Scottish food system’, exploring how IoT and other innovative technologies can be used to support change, sustainability and growth in the sector.

Jayne Ashley is Head of Natural Capital at South of Scotland Enterprise (SoSE). Jayne has been a sustainability practitioner for over 30 years, advising, facilitating, and mentoring communities and the private and public sectors, from local to European level.  She is creating and leading the new Natural Capital team at SoSE, building on her knowledge and skills in community wealth building, creative and cultural industries, natural resources, tourism, and the creation of the Regional Land Use Partnership.

Transforming the Scottish food system

At this year’s Technology Summit, Jayne will be a guest on our second panel session on ‘Transforming the Scottish food system’, exploring how IoT and other innovative technologies can be used to support change, sustainability and growth in the sector. This session will be chaired by Professor John Crawford.

Emilie Combet is a Professor Human Nutrition at the University of Glasgow, School of Medicine.

Using methods including human interventions, cross-sectional surveys as well as lab-based biomarker studies, her research focuses on the role of food and diet in sustaining lifelong health. Particular areas of interest include obesity and metabolism, the role of micronutrients and bioactives in metabolic pathways in the context of stress and ageing, and innovation to support a healthful and sustainable food system.

Transforming the Scottish food system

At this year’s Technology Summit, Emilie will be a guest on our second panel session on ‘Transforming the Scottish food system’, exploring how IoT and other innovative technologies can be used to support change, sustainability and growth in the sector. This session will be chaired by Professor John Crawford.

Bryce Cunningham is an Organic dairy farmer and director of Mossgiel Organic Dairy and the Mossgiel Snug.

In 2015, after the death of his grandfather and father (also his business partners) the milk price collapsed, and the bank withdrew funding from their modern, high production dairy farm.

Realising that high production dairy was no longer a sustainable method for small scale traditional farming, Bryce designed a new approach for Scottish dairy – becoming organic, 100% cereal free in his own cattle’s feed and brewing milk instead of fast and forced pasteurising.

Growing over the years, Mossgiel Organic Dairy is now enjoyed across Scotland.  Today, Mossgiel employs 31 people and works with five other organic farms in south west Scotland. No single use plastic has been used for the milk packaging since 2019 and customers include home deliveries, coffee shops, education and school sites and also the Scottish Government.

Bryce also has an ambition to be net zero by December 2025, utilising renewable technology and emission sequestration in the farms soils.

Transforming the Scottish food system

At this year’s Technology Summit, Bryce will be a guest on our second panel session on ‘Transforming the Scottish food system’, exploring how IoT and other innovative technologies can be used to support change, sustainability and growth in the sector. This session will be chaired by Professor John Crawford.

Emily Seward is Head of Data Applications at Intelligent Growth Solutions, a multi-award-winning global business, based in Scotland, which designs, supplies, and supports vertical farms for growers all around the world. It was founded in 2013 by a farmer and an engineer – addressing key challenges in the food industry with precision indoor agriculture.

Emily is focused on building a multi-disciplinary data applications team focused on developing ‘intelligence’ for the IGS Growth Towers. The team, comprised of data scientists, data engineers and visualisation experts, bring together the data from the IGS Growth Towers, e.g., machine telemetry and environmental data, together with growth recipes and growth data, e.g., images and use advanced analytical techniques including AI and ML to create valuable applications for IGS customers.

Prior to joining IGS, Emily worked for a vertical farming company, as an innovation consultant and for a private investment and management company that focused on sustainable agriculture projects in South America and Eastern Europe.

Emily has a PhD in Interdisciplinary Bioscience from the University of Oxford, a BA in Natural Science from the University of Cambridge and spent a year at Harvard University on a Herchel Smith Scholarship. She has an in-depth knowledge of software commercialisation, genetics and bioinformatics and has developed a proven track record in delivering high quality presentations and teaching. Emily has also acquired experience at working internationally, having lived, worked or studied in Europe, the US, Africa, China and South America.

Transforming the Scottish food system

At this year’s Technology Summit, Emily will be a guest on our second panel session of the day, ‘Transforming the Scottish food system’. The panel will exploring how IoT and other innovative technologies can be used to support change, sustainability and growth in the sector. This session will be chaired by Professor John Crawford.

Maximilian Roth is driving the business development for the new LPWAN standard MIoTY at The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (Fraunhofer IIS) and in the MIoTY Alliance.

Max has over 10 years’ experience in evaluating and commercialising new technologies with partners from industry and research. His technological focus is on smart sensors, wireless communication and energy harvesting.

Fraunhofer IIS is the largest institute of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, the world’s leading applied research organisation, with 76 institutes throughout Germany, 30,000 staff and an annual research budget of almost 3 billion euros.

The MIoTY Alliance is a community of people, businesses, and institutes with a vision to create and share the most accessible, robust and efficient IoT connectivity solution on the market. The community offers a platform for developers, hardware manufacturers, system integrators, service companies and end customers by providing an open, standardised and interoperable ecosystem across the entire IoT value chain.

Max’s presentation: MIoTY in a nutshell