Creating connections in Yorkshire and the Humber

Ana Cavalcanti is a Professor at the University of York, UK, and holds a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies. In that role, she is Director of the RoboStar centre on Software Engineering for Robotics. She previously held a Royal Society Industry Fellowship, which provided her with the ideal opportunity to understand and contribute to the practice of formal methods working with QinetiQ.

Her main scientific achievements have been on the design and justification of sound program design and verification techniques. She has covered theoretical and practical integration with industry-strength technology. Her work provides support for graphical notations popular with engineers, and for main-stream programming languages. It also supports high degrees of automation to enable usability and scalability. She has chaired the Programme Committee of leading conferences, and been a member of numerous Programme Committees. Currently, she is the Chair of the Formal Methods Europe Board.

Alastair Lewis is professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of York and the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. He is an experimental scientist who has studied the composition of the atmosphere and the impacts of pollution from polar regions to megacities, open oceans to tropical forests. He has received the John Jeyes Prize for Environment, Energy and Sustainability and the Royal Society of Chemistry award for contributions to science policy. Alastair has been Chair of the Defra Air Quality Expert Group (AQEG) since 2019, Chair of the Department for Transport Science Advisory Council since 2021 and a member of the Environmental Sustainability Panel of the Civil Aviation Authority. He has been a contributor to >300 scientific papers, chapters and reports on topics spanning transport, combustion and environmental impacts, measurement technology, air pollution and health effects. He currently holds a Royal Society Industrial Fellowship working with global chemicals manufacturer Givaudan SA.

Pooja is a Kenyan-born "modern nomad".

She graduated with a First class (Hons) MChem (Chemistry) degree from Coventry University which included an industrial placement at GlaxoSmithKline. This was followed by a PhD at the University of Warwick with late Professor Mark Rodger, which was jointly funded by industry (Cabot Speciality Fluids) and the Warwick Postgraduate Scholarship. 

Pooja was a post-doctoral researcher at the Division of Materials Theory at Uppsala University, Sweden, on a EU-FP7 project looking at diagnosing malaria using a magneto-optical technique. After 3.5 years she joined the University of Bath as an EPSRC Research Officer working on modelling sustainable energy materials with applications in fuel cells, lithium ion batteries and thin film photovoltaics. She has since been a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield, before joining Loughborough as a Lecturer and currently holds the title of Reader in Materials Modelling.

After completing his PhD in Theoretical Polymer Physics at the University of Sheffield in 1994 and research posts at the Universities of Southampton and Leeds, he joined UMIST Materials Science Department. In 2000, he moved to Durham Chemistry which had a strong research program in polymer science. He returned to Sheffield Physics in 2011.

His research has ranged from dynamics in polymer nanocomposites to structure/property relations in organic photovoltaics, with much of it being motivated by close collaborations with experimental colleagues. His present research focuses on developing theories for thermodynamics and structure evolution in complex systems, including two recently completed industrial PhD projects on microstructure in rubber/nanoparticle blends for car tires (Solvay) and composites for next generation aircraft (Cytec). Early in 2024, he started his Royal Society Industry Fellowship, which he is undertaking at 50% of his time over 4 years, working with Hexcel Composites.

With a background in life sciences, serial entrepreneur Lynne Cadenhead has over 25 years’ start-up and equity investment experience in both technology and retail sectors and is currently CEO of her third start-up company, Immaculate Drinks. 

A passionate advocate for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and for helping women globally to take charge of their own destiny, Lynne has served on over 30 Boards, is past Chair of UNICEF in Scotland, an Ambassador for Women on Boards, a Visiting Professor in Governance and Enterprise and Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Edinburgh Napier University. 

In 2020, Lynne was awarded the Institute of Directors Scotland Director of the Year award for Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion. In 2022 Lynne was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the Open University for international services to gender equality in business.

She is Chief Operating Officer for TRICAPITAL Angels Ltd, Chair of Women’s Enterprise Scotland and served on the Scottish Government’s National Council for Economic Transformation.

Joe is the Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at the Advanced Wellbeing Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University.

A sport scientist by background, with a PhD in Clinical Biomechanics; following a post-doc examining the optimal running technique for endurance running, Joe worked as a Scientific Advisor to MAS, a global sports apparel manufacturer for Nike, Speedo and Lululemon, advising them on the development and patenting of textile-integrated wearables.

After getting the start-up bug whilst working with MAS, Joe then founded Elements Technology, a manufacturing technology start-up. Over the next four years he raised £500k, assembled a team, launched an award-winning product, and exited in early 2022 through sale to a leading additive manufacturing company.

Louise is Commercial Director at Health Innovation East leading a team that supports entrepreneurs and industry partners develop their products and services for implementation within the NHS and other healthcare systems. Louise has more than 25 years experience in drug discovery, development and commercialisation within academia, biotech and pharmaceutical organisations. Louise’s Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence project supports the Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation team at the Babraham Institute to ‘accelerate fundamental life science research for talent development, population health benefit and wealth creation’.

Dr Julie Maxton CBE is the Executive Director of the Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post. Before taking up her position at the Royal Society in 2011 Julie was Registrar at the University of Oxford, the first woman in 550 years in the role.

She is an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, a Bencher of the Middle Temple, a Freeman of the Goldsmith’s Company, and a Board member of Engineering UK, the Charities Aid Foundation, Haberdasher Aske’s School and of the International Advisory Board of the Blavatnik School of Governance at Oxford University.

Originally trained as a barrister at the Middle Temple, Julie combined a career as a practising lawyer with that of an academic, holding a number of senior academic positions, including those of Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of numerous articles concerned with trusts, equity, commercial and property law.

Steve is Chair of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult – the government’s flagship network of advanced manufacturing innovation centres, he is a member of Council at the Biotechnology and Biosciences Research Council and Chair of the Industrial Advisory Group of BioYorkshire. He has had a number of other board roles and was manufacturing advisor to the Vaccine Task Force during 2021/22. Before that he was CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies – a globally leading biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing organisation. He chaired the UK’s Industrial Biotechnology Leadership Forum for 8 years and was a Co-Chair of the UK’s Bioeconomy strategy steering group when it was launched in 2018.