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Meet the CENSIS team
Our diverse team at CENSIS has expertise in engineering, project management, business engagement, finance, marketing and administration.
You will find email addresses on each profile if you would like to contact a team member directly.
Our Governing Board plays a strategic role in our aim of increasing technology innovation and adoption across Scotland. Made up of experienced industrialists and leading academics, the Board has accountability for all financial and funding activities.
Board Observers
The CENSIS host institution and administrative hub is the University of Glasgow.Roles in CENSIS are advertised and managed by the University of Glasgow.
Vacancies to join our team will be listed here as they arise.
Paul is an entrepreneurial technologist with a substantial track record for applying innovation in the defence and security 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 including Technical Director of the Sensors and Avionics business and then 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.
Currently, Paul has founded and is running a private sector incubator and maintains a number of advisory roles. His business skills include leadership, substantial international P&L experience, capital raising and realising value from technology.
Paul is married with three teenage children. Easy conversation topics are ice hockey, working cocker spaniels and rusty classic cars.
Dr Graham Kerr has over twenty years’ experience in New Product Development and Engineering Management.
As a Post-Doctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow, Graham worked on laser interferometry for gravitational wave detection developing laser stabilisation techniques.
His first foray into industry was with Babcock Energy Systems as a Senior Electronics and Instrumentation Engineer developing controls solutions for the Energy Sector. He was a founding member of Motorola Manufacturing Systems in Livingston and spent ten years developing factory automation solutions for manufacturing sectors such as cellular communications, semiconductor manufacture and automotive electronics. As R&D Manager for Texol Technical Solutions he led the development of a number of NPI programmes including a range of gas generators for analytical laboratories.
Immediately prior to joining CENSIS, Graham spent five years managing an R&D team at FMC Technologies developing advanced sensor solutions for the Oil & Gas industry and collaborating with universities in technology development.
He holds a BSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Glasgow.
Michael has a background in science and engineering, with a BSc in Physics and a PhD in Engineering, both from the University of Glasgow. He has worked in both the public and private sectors on technology transfer and technology exploitation projects taking technology from the laboratory out into industry. He has also had an extensive and successful career in business development, over 25 years, across a broad range of sectors and technologies.
Michael has also worked in economic development, on the privatisation of the National Engineering Laboratory, for a University start-up, a large multinational company and a business process and IT outsourcing and consultancy firm.
Prior to joining CENSIS in February 2019, Michael was responsible for business development for QuantIC the UK’s Quantum Hub for Quantum Enhanced Imaging where he facilitated and supported the development of over 30 academic-industry collaborations to accelerate the uptake of quantum technologies.
Bob Downes has experience across private and public sectors in the UK, Europe and the US. He has been involved with many business sectors including telecommunications, energy, and health care; and has managed major infrastructure provision as well as regional economic development. His responsibilities have covered large scale change management, strategy development and deep operational leadership.
Bob is Chair of SEPA (Scottish Environment Protection Agency); a board member of KUBE Networks; Chair of the Scottish Government Technology Advisory Board and a Trustee of the Glasgow School of Art Development Trust. He is an advisor to small technology businesses and a member of the Par Syndicate. Formerly Bob held senior roles with BT Group and the Conran Group, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Development Agency.
Professor Steve Beaumont is Vice Principal Emeritus at the University of Glasgow. He has a portfolio of responsibilities including academic lead for CENSIS and chairing and holding non-executive directorships on the boards of a number of the university’s spinout companies. He is Director of QUANTIC, the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Quantum Imaging which leads a programme engaging seven universities with industry partners. He is principal investigator on strategic research grants and involved in a number of projects associated with Glasgow’s campus development.
Until 31 July 2014 Steve was Vice-Principal for Research & Enterprise at the University of Glasgow in which role he was responsible for the University’s research strategy, policies and operational matters including negotiations and relationships with research sponsors and strategic partners. Additionally he oversaw the University’s enterprise activities, including research links with industry and the promotion of spinout companies.
His research background is in nanotechnology and nanoelectronics for which he was awarded the OBE in 2002. Before taking up his Vice Principal positions he was Head of Department of Electronics & Electrical Engineering (1995-1999) and (from 1999-2005) Director of the Institute for System Level Integration. He is an entrepreneur in his own right having founded Intellemetrics Ltd in 1982 to manufacture a range of thickness monitoring equipment for the semiconductor industry.
Professor Beaumont is a Chartered Engineer (CEng). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2000, and more recently (July 2007) a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).
Craig has over ten years’ experience across a variety of engineering sectors and holds European M.Eng (Hons) in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Glasgow.
Before joining CENSIS, he worked three years as Business Development Manager for BAE Systems regional aircraft and developed new revenue streams, selling modifications on new aircraft types to airlines throughout Europe and North America. Prior to this he worked as Sales and Project Engineer for Duerkopp Fordertechnik, working with the UK’s biggest retailers to help design and install fully automated material handling systems for the clothing industry.
As part of a two year graduate programme with FKI, he has gained experience in lean manufacturing, CAD design and project management within logistics, railway and automotive industries while living in France, Germany and USA.
Dr Stephen Milne is experienced in designing, managing, and implementing international research projects for commercial product ideas with a hardware and software focus in the medical technology sector.
Stephen obtained the European MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Glasgow, and subsequently worked for Agilent Technologies and Freescale Semiconductor. Following this, he completed an Engineering Doctorate within the ESPRC funded Medical Devices Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Strathclyde. Subsequently, his doctoral research was awarded further international funding to test the sensor device he developed clinically and develop further clinical sensing markers. During his time as a Research Associate at the University of Strathclyde he collaborated with a range of businesses, from multinationals to university spin out companies, on a broad range of technological innovations.
Prior to joining CENSIS, Stephen attended Babson College, Boston, one of the top rated US business schools as part of Entrepreneurial Scotland’s Saltire Fellowship program. As part of the Fellowship he spent six months with the Digital Health and Care innovation centre on a number of commercial orientated projects.
Dr Rachael Wakefield’s technical background is in materials biodeterioration and laser and LED based environmental sensing. Her broad area of interest is sensing technologies for remote and challenging environments, and for agritech and marine applications. A specialist in IP and technology transfer Rachael has over 10 years’ experience in the set up and management of collaborative R&D projects, contracts, technology licensing and university spin out company development. She understands the technical and commercial challenges from both sides of the fence as an academic researcher and as a co-founder in a technology start up.
Prior to joining CENSIS Rachael left a postdoctoral research post at RGU to explore the riskier side of technology commercialisation and co-founded a technology start up with an offshore and subsea sensing focus. She left after a few years to return to academia as a member of the research commercialisation team at the University of Aberdeen, managing five of the 10 academic teams that successfully spun out of Aberdeen during her time there. Rachael’s expertise is underpinned by applied academic research in environmental science, laser spectroscopy and optics-based sensing of materials. She holds a PhD in soil pollution microbiology from the University of Aberdeen.
Dr Cade Wells is a Chartered Engineer with over 15 years’ experience in the research and development of embedded systems. He holds an Engineering Doctorate in System Level Integration jointly awarded by the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde. He also holds an MEng in Computer System Engineering from Bangor University, Wales.
Before joining CENSIS, Cade founded and ran an engineering consultancy providing technical and business services to organisations developing electronic products and undertook forensic engineering investigations of electrical and electronic systems. He was also the Engineering Development Manager of a Scottish start-up, successfully developing and bringing to market its first innovative imaging product.
Prior to starting his own company, Cade held the position of Lead Electronics Design Engineer at the Institute for System Level Integration. In this role Cade managed the delivery of Scottish and European-funded projects providing technical support to entrepreneurs and SMEs developing new electronic products and services. He was also actively involved in wireless communication systems R&D projects and technology transfer projects introducing new imaging capabilities into companies.
Jim Cockram supports CENSIS activities in the Highlands and Islands and is based in Inverness.
Jim is the founder of a hi-tech Scottish company exploiting technology improve systems integrity. With a passion for technology and innovation, he joined CENSIS to promote the delivery of IoT-related projects to industry.
An ex-RAF Engineering Officer, Jim holds honours degrees in Aerospace Engineering and Design, is a Chartered Aerospace Engineer and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He has over 38 years in the aerospace industry with experience in other verticals including food and drink, oil and gas and rail.
Jim’s expertise includes formulating, planning and delivering complex projects, including R&D activities, across a multi-disciplinary environment. He was an early advocate of applying lean thinking to defence organisations, with mentoring from McKinsey: this lead him to develop maintenance and data-exploitation strategies that have been employed in highly successful private and public sector business improvement projects.
Jim is an enthusiastic member, and former chairman, of the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Highland branch, and is a keen advocate for Continuous Professional Development.
Siân joined CENSIS from an earlier business development role in the Scottish Sensor Systems Centre (S3C), an industry-university partnership delivering collaborative research into intelligent sensors and sensor systems. At CENSIS Siân is responsible for outreach and events planning, strategic marketing, and skills development, including CENSIS support of PhD and EngD projects in partnership with industry and universities.
Prior to joining S3C, she was the Manager of the Engineering Doctorate Centre for System Level Integration, a postgraduate research degree programme delivered jointly by the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt and Strathclyde.
Lynda supports the CENSIS marketing, event planning and social media activities on a part-time consultancy basis. She studied Business Studies and Marketing and her career over the last 25 years has been in in the advertising, marketing and graphic design sectors.
Prior to working with CENSIS, she managed marketing for the Encompass project at the University of Glasgow and ran an events programme to encourage Scottish SMEs to be more innovative. Lynda also has specialist experience in marketing for construction, new build and education.
Selin is an experienced project and portfolio manager who is PRINCE2 Practitioner certified. She holds an MA (Hons) in Management, and is an APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional.
Before joining CENSIS, Selin established the University of Glasgow’s EU Project Management Office. She has a track record of delivering a portfolio of European funded research projects, worth in excess of €40 million. These global, multi-partner projects spanned such diverse fields as aerospace engineering, solar physics, biological pest control (neuroendocrinology), and humanoid robotics.
Prior to this, Selin worked as a Management Consultant with PwC, delivering organisational change. These projects ranged from large-scale transformation projects, to targeted change initiatives addressing specific client challenges, such as budgetary pressures, quality management issues, and process inefficiencies. At PwC, Selin specialised in Supply Chain Management, and provided programme and project management services to clients in the Oil and Gas, Biomedical, and Pharmaceutical industries. She also has experience of working with public and third sector bodies, such as local councils, the NHS and police authorities.
John has over 20 years’ experience in the entire product life cycle including R&D and New Product Development primarily within the Oil and Gas industry.
Starting out as an Electronic Design Engineer, John moved into System Design and Architecture before transitioning into Project Management. He has overseen multiple projects with multidisciplinary global teams covering proof of concept, prototyping, qualification and manufacturing to field deployment and support.
Before joining CENSIS, John worked with FMC Technologies (TechnipFMC) as a Programme Manager; Sercel France as a Lead Project Engineer; and Vibtech as a Principal Hardware Design Engineer where he was instrumental in growing the company from a university engaged start-up to a $60m company bought by Sercel.
John holds a BEng and MPhil in Electronic & Electrical Engineering from the University of Strathclyde and a number of patents for his efforts across multiple projects and companies.
With a track record in innovation, Kevin is an experienced systems engineer and has spent several years as a technical lead in organisations within the Telecoms and Oil & Gas sectors.
The bulk of Kevin’s career was spent with Fujitsu as a Principal Engineer, successfully defining and developing WiMAX/4G LTE systems. Kevin was the driving force and architect behind the development of a flexible software platform that was used to host innovative applications for the optimisation of cellular and WiFi networks. At his time with Fujitsu, Kevin successfully led and delivered on many strategically important projects and is co-inventor on a number of patents of which 15 have been granted to date.
Before joining CENSIS, Kevin spent time with Aker Solutions leading the development of a wireless based condition monitoring product for the Oil & Gas sector. He also led the creation of a strategic vision for advanced capabilities of future monitoring products, focusing on overall architecture and technology direction that would best suit Aker’s business needs.
Kevin holds a BSc (Hons) in Electronic Engineering and an MSc in Wireless Communication Systems, both from Glasgow Caledonian University.
Helen is an engineer with research and development experience in the defence and microelectronics sectors. Prior to CENSIS she worked as an Applications Engineer at ST Microelectronics, providing system validation, technical and application support for marketing and customers. She also spent 10 years working for SELEX Galileo developing antenna test and calibration automation process, analysis, calibration and algorithm development of electronically scanned radars.
Helen holds a BSc (Hons) in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Glasgow and MPhil Applied Physics from the University of Strathclyde.
Dr Shrawan Jha is responsible for development projects related to sensor elements and transductance (pre-processing). An experienced semiconductor engineer and physicist, Shrawan has experience in developing sensors for application in engineering, IT, health, environmental monitoring and defence. He is also experienced in developing other electronic devices including LEDs, HFETs, and MEMS based on micro and nanotechnologies from concept to materials and devices development to applications.
Prior to joining CENSIS, Shrawan worked on a number of industrial as well as academic R&D projects. His research output in past 5 years has resulted in IP generation and contribution to ~50-research papers in top rated international journals and conferences, with a present h-factor of 10 and about 200 citations to his published work worldwide.
Shrawan has proposed, supervised and led a number of projects to success, including some that received innovation awards and interest from business. He has been a member of IEEE and Materials Research Society (MRS). Shrawan’s academic training includes Masters in Physics (Electronics and Nuclear Science), Masters in Technology (Solid-State Materials) and a PhD in Microelectronics (III-V device technology for application in telecommunication and bioelectronics). He has several awards and merits to his credit and is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, City University of Hong Kong, and Imperial College London.
Norman has over 20 years’ experience of embedded software development. He started as a software engineer at Motorola Manufacturing Systems, working on robotic systems for factory automation, before moving to Pentland Systems, where he designed embedded software for Analogue I/O modules. At Honeywell Security he worked on intruder detection systems, and at Bitwise he developed software for 3G femtocell access points.
Before joining CENSIS, Norman was at FMC, working on sensing and measurement R&D projects.
He has a BSc in Physics and Astronomy and a PhD in Physics, both from the University of Glasgow.
An electronics design engineer who has spent over 25 years in industry, Steven has a wealth of experience across a range of industry sectors including computer internetworking, data/telecommunications, lab instruments and medical devices, subsea and oil and gas, and land seismic survey equipment.
His key skills are in designing circuits for microprocessor and low-power microcontroller-based applications, low-power digital sensor circuits, WiFi, BLE and NFC based circuit design, battery-powered applications including charging and charge monitoring, PCB layout, design specification and test documentation, and regulatory approvals testing and certification.
Sean is an electronic and software engineer with previous experience in the semiconductor industry. He now draws on his detailed knowledge of microcontrollers and microprocessors to develop quality embedded software solutions.
Before joining CENSIS on a short-term consultancy basis, Sean worked at Freescale and NXP as the Lead Applications Engineer supporting an entire product family of 32-bit automotive gateway devices within the Connectivity and Security team. During this time, he delivered New Product Integration (NPI), provided top-tier customer support, developed an array of enablement software, created many demos and reference designs, and delivered customer training on a multitude of technical topics in the USA, Germany, India, China, and Korea.
He graduated from University of Strathclyde with a First-class MEng in Computer and Electronic Systems.
Susan is a qualified CIMA accountant with over 15 years’ post-qualified experience.
Before joining CENSIS, Susan worked for three years as an accountancy tutor for Kaplan Financial. Prior to this she worked for seven years at Barclays Wealth where she held roles as Finance Business Partner and Financial Controller.
Susan trained as an accountant with British Telecom in London having being recruited onto their finance graduate training programme.
Diane holds an LLB (Hons) and LLM and has extensive experience working within and for the University sector. She has over 14 years’ experience in drafting, reviewing and negotiating agreements between University and commercial partners, including agreements for the supply of research, service, consultancy, confidentiality, secondments, collaborations and has practical experience of state aid issues and UK / EU export controls. Diane has an excellent understanding of the challenges faced by public and private sectors and adopts a pragmatic approach. Diane is an active participant in a Scottish University’s contracts working group, a forum which has been set up to try and simplify contracts, to share best practice and find ways of reducing transactional costs across various activities / various sectors.
Prior to this, Diane worked for a micro SME which custom-designed and built compressor packages for CHP plants where she gained experience in costings, engineering sales, procurement and project management. Subsequently, after the company was acquired by a large engineering and manufacturing organisation, Diane assumed responsibility for the aftersales market including preparing quotations, managing and scheduling commissioning and maintenance activities, sourcing repairs and replacements, procurement through to packaging, customs clearance, delivery and final invoicing.
Johan is an experienced administrator with more than 15 years’ office management expertise, and joins CENSIS from a training and professional development company based on the outskirts of Glasgow.
After several years in the same post, coupled with the her youngest son starting school, Johan felt that it was time for a fresh challenge professionally. She had developed an office support structure that enables maximum support mechanisms for those working within and out with the CENSIS office.
After leaving college, Kaid joined CENSIS in February 2016 on a Modern Apprenticeship programme. She provides administrative support to the whole office including the CEO and her day-to-day duties include managing staff diaries, room bookings, providing finance and purchasing support to the Office Manager, and providing marketing support for CENSIS events.
Following the completion of her Modern Apprenticeship, Kaid went on to gain an HNC in Digital Marketing and in 2019, she began a Graduate Apprenticeship in Business Management with Glasgow Caledonian University.
