Board

Douglas graduated with First Class Honours from Aberdeen University, followed by PhD from the University of Wales in the early 80s.  A research administration post at the University of Leeds, then led to management positions at Strathclyde, Nottingham and now Newcastle.  He has a passion for seeing the fruits of research into application.  His brief at Newcastle covers external research funding (£180m book value), research strategy and policy, patents, licensing, spin-out companies, support for international partnerships and economic impact of the University in the region.  A quasi-public sector career has been interspersed at various times with Directorships of many young technology businesses including 9 years as a Director for a midlands based civil engineering consultancy.  He is the higher education representative on the NE Transition Management Board looking at the implementation of new national systems of business support.  Board memberships include NES General Partner Ltd (overseeing management of an investment fund), Alcyomics Ltd ( a University spin-out company), ASTEC Ltd, Codeworks Ltd (an ICT industrial network), Praxis Courses Ltd (Technology Transfer Training), Unico (the UK research commercialisation association), NUIB pte Ltd (Singapore), Clarizon Ltd (a University spin-out) and the Advisory Boards of a European Programme seeking to professionalise technology transfer training and, until early 2009, the Institute of Knowledge Transfer.

Richard lives in Cambridge and is Chief Executive of FD Solutions.

Richard is a chartered accountant. He qualified at Ernst & Whinney ( E&W) in Edinburgh in 1984 and moved to London with E&W ( now Ernst & Young). After a few years with The Arts Council and then Island Records he became Financial Controller of Samuelson Group plc and Finance Director of Samuelson Communications Ltd at the age of 28.

In 1990 he moved to Laserpoint Communications Ltd in Cambridge as Finance Director. In 1991 he was appointed as Managing Director as part of an agreement to put the company into administration. He restored its solvency and returned it to its founder a year later when he joined FD Solutions.

Since then he has developed particular expertise in manufacturing, food, technology and not-for-profit businesses, where he has reorganised and implemented systems to match the management’s needs and particularly improved cashflow. Richard’s most significant achievements in this period are:

• ·         Implemented a turnaround at an entrepreneurial manufacturing business from a loss-making operation to £35m turnover in four years, making £4m profit along the way. Richard managed the cashflow to targets negotiated with lenders & creditors, and improved systems for invoicing and reporting using Sage Line 100 and then Sage Enterprise.                             
• ·         Helped establish a VC-backed invoice discounting operation with turnover of £100m and a back-office of only 30, by designing and implementing a system based on Systems Union Sun.  Richard then helped the same management team develop a European business.
• ·         Trebled the size of an NHS organisation by negotiating a contract with the Department of Health.
• ·         Reorganised the senior management of a small specialist engineering manufacturer turn around his business from loss making to profit making, groom the business for sale, complete a sale, then within 12 months complete a buyback and a few years later a further sale to a European manufacturer.
• ·         As co-founder of FD Solutions, Richard has overseen growth of the business from start-up to established provider of flexible finance director services. He also sits on the Finance and Taxation Committee of the BioIndustry Association.

Alison Campbell's career has largely been at the academic-industry interface, both in industry and the public sector. As an independent consultant, Alison specialises in academic/business collaboration and commercialisation. Her areas of expertise include strategic planning; project management; business development; and technology transfer. She also delivers training and development, nationally and internationally.

Most recently, as Managing Director for King's College London Business Ltd she ran research commercialisation and enterprise across the range of academic disciplines at the University. Her remit has included business development and collaboration, IP management, consultancy, out-licensing, start-up company creation, clinical trials, executive education, research management and capturing the impact of research and innovation. Previously Alison worked for the UK Medical Research Council, with responsibility for commercialisation of the intra-mural research programme. She has been Division Director within the MRC, Technology Transfer Group and was latterly CEO at MRC Technology. A graduate of University College London, she completed her PhD in chemical biology at Imperial College London and then moved into industry as a research scientist at Celltech Ltd.

Alison has served as a non-executive director of a number of high technology companies and is currently a non-executive director of PraxisUnico, the UK organisation that supports knowledge transfer and commercialisation, and Chair of its training committee. She led the merger of Praxis and Unico in 2009. Alison has acted as an adviser to a number of government agencies including the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, Research Councils UK, the BBSRC, JISC, Enterprise Ireland and Science Foundation Ireland.

Alison was awarded an OBE for services to Knowledge Transfer in 2010.

Prior to his role at Oxford, Phil occupied a number of roles at Bournemouth University, finishing off with Acting Head of the Centre for Research and Knowledge Transfer where he developed the IP management and Technology Transfer function, and was also responsible for the development and management of research.

In a previous life his PhD was in synthetic organometallic chemistry, but following a Royal Society postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Auckland, he became a research administrator at the University of Bath. He also spent time in Brussels working for UKRO, briefing UK universities on European Research Framework Programmes. In order to get a more relevant degree, he obtained a Masters in Intellectual Property Management from Bournemouth University.

Phil spent six years on the committee of ARMA, the Association of Research Managers and Administrators, latterly as deputy chair. As well as the PraxisUnico Board, he is also on the Member Services Committee. Phil has two small children, and his outside interests are now dictated by their social lives, rather than his own.

Dr O’Hare has a first class MA (hons) in Natural Sciences from Cambridge and a DPhil in Experimental Nuclear Physics from Oxford. She started her career as a Senior Analyst and Programmer in Network Services at AT&T and later worked at Syntegra as its Technology Appraisal Manager and in the Royal Mail Research Group where she was Head of Information Exploitation Research.

Her previous Enterprise post was at Reading where she established and headed up the Technology Transfer Office.  She is a member of the Institute of Physics and the British Computer Society, and a Chartered IT Professional, Chartered Engineer, Registered Technology Transfer Professional and Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce.

At London Metropolitan University she was responsible for Enterprise strategy and HEIF funding, overseeing a team of 22 staff as well as income delivery of some £15M per annum. In addition, she managed a wide portfolio of Continuing Professional Development programmes, the Metropolitan Works Centre for digital design and manufacture and the Accelerator incubator and student hatchery amongst other things. She is also Chair of the Conference Committee of the PraxisUnico Board.

Stuart is currently Spin-Out Company Development Manager at University of Strathclyde his responsibilities inlcude:  

• Managing the University’s portfolio of shareholdings, valued at over £5m in 40+ companies, including spin-outs.
• Managing the spin-out process for over 40 opportunities, many of which have resulted in thriving spin-out companies.  
• Writing, advising and managing successful bids for over £6m of public sector commercialisation funding, including the £4m Synergy Fund, formed in 1999.
• Negotiating and managing the exit process for University shares in 6 spin-out companies, raising over £1.5m for the University.
• Working with a variety of venture capitalists, business angels, banks and professional advisers on financial and other support for new and existing companies.
• Developing and managing the £550,000 Technology Talent Initiative, which funds three Glasgow-based Universities to contract with Chief Executive Designates of pre-start spin-out companies, and which has led to the creation of 9 spin-out companies, which have in turn raised over £3m of seed funding.

Lita Nelsen is the Director of the Technology Licensing Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she has been since 1986.  This office manages over 500 new inventions per year from MIT, the Whitehead Institute, and Lincoln Laboratory.  Typically, they negotiate over 100 licenses, and start up over 20 new companies per year

Ms Nelsen earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT and an M.S. in Management from MIT as a Sloan Fellow.

Prior to joining the MIT Technology Licensing Office, Ms. Nelsen spent 20 years in industry, primarily in the fields of membrane separations, medical devices, and biotechnology, at such companies as Amicon, Millipore, Arthur D. Little, Inc., and Applied Biotechnology.

Ms Nelsen was the 1992 President of the Association of University Technology Managers and serves on the board the Mount Auburn Hospital, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Foundation.  She serves as the intellectual property advisor to the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative and is a founding and current board member of the Center for Management of Intellectual Property in Health Research.

Ms Nelsen is widely published in the field of technology transfer and university/industry collaborations and was a CMI Fellow at the University of Cambridge with the Cambridge MIT Institute studying university/industry/government partnerships in technology transfer and local economic development. She is a co-founder of Praxis, the UK University Technology Transfer Training Programme and in 2009 she received an MBE in recognition of her work in innovation and technology/knowledge transfer.

Dr David Secher is Principal of Cambridge KT Ltd and works as an independent consultant in the area of research commercialisation - in the UK and internationally. He is based in the University of Cambridge. His career has included Director of Research Services, University of Cambridge; Chief Executive of the N8 Research Partnership (a collaboration of the eight most research-intensive universities in the North of England); Director of Drug Development, Cancer Research Campaign (now Cancer Research UK); and Director of Monoclonal Therapeutics, Celltech Ltd. David co-founded Praxis (now PraxisUnico), the leading UK technology transfer training company and is a director of PraxisUnico with responsibility for the PraxisUnico international programme. David has been a non-executive director of a number of high technology and investment companies. He acts as an adviser to universities, governments and individuals on commercialisation of intellectual property. David received the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2007.

Trustee, Malcolm Skingle CBE

Director of Academic Liaison, GlaxoSmithKline

Malcolm Skingle has a BSc in Pharmacology/Biochemistry and a PhD in Neuropharmacology.  He has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 35 years and has gained a wide breadth of experience in the management of research activities.  Part of his former role as a research leader in a Neuropharmacology department involved co-supervising collaborations with academics in the UK, Europe and USA.  He has more than 60 publications including articles on the interface between industry and academia.

For more than a decade he has managed Academic Liaison at GSK managing staff in Stevenage, Research Triangle Park and Philadelphia.  His role involves close liaison with several groups outside the Company e.g. Government Departments, Research and Funding Councils, Small Biotechnology Companies and other science-driven organisations.  He sits on many external bodies including the NC3R’s Board, the CBI academic liaison group and several UK University Department advisory groups.  He also chairs several groups including a regional Science and Industry Council, the Diamond (Synchotron) Industrial Advisory Board, the Inner Core Lambert working group on boilerplate agreements and the ABPI group working on academic liaison.

Malcolm has also been awarded a CBE in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List in recognition of his contribution to the pharmaceutical industry as well as an Honorary Professorship from the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham and an honorary DSc from the University of Hertfordshire.