Martin Frid-Nielsen - Chairman and Founder, Soonr

Martin is founder, Chairman and Chief Product Officer of SoonR, a mobile player focused on providing access, search and sharing of pc-data from any mobile device. At Soonr he is responsible for setting direction for all dimensions of product strategy including operations, functionality and user experience. Martin brings extensive start-up and larger company experience to Soonr, having spent over ten years in various executive positions at enterprise software providers Merant, NetObjects and Borland International.

Martin brings extensive start-up and larger company experience to Soonr, having spent 3 years in various executive positions at enterprise software provider Merant including VP of Development, and was actively involved in selling the company to Serena for about $400 million in 2004. Prior to joining Merant through an acquisition, Martin was at NetObjects for over six years, where he was the VP of R&D since founding and through its IPO in 1999, he was instrumental in defining and creating the company's leading web-authoring product NetObjects Fusion. He was also a principal of Hilltop Software Technologies, a provider of pre-internet communication applications and consulting services.

Prior to that, Martin spent ten years at Borland International in senior engineering and program management positions where he developed cutting edge products such as Sidekick 1.0 & 2.0, the company's hit personal information organizer that created a new market category, Personal Information Management. Martin is a named inventor on four (4) U.S. Patents related to data synchronization and web authoring technologies.

Loic Le Meur - CEO and Founder, Seesmic

Loic is the CEO behind Seesmic. He founded the company in 2007, with the goal of turning online video into a powerful medium for threaded, interactive video conversations. A seasoned entrepreneur, Loic launched several companies prior to Seesmic including: shared web hosting company RapidSite, (acquired by France Telecom) and B2L, an interactive agency (acquired by BBDO). His last company, Ublog, was acquired by SixApart, after which Loic became Chairman of SixApart Europe.

In addition to his hands-on entrepreneurial expertise, Loic serves as a board member of Europe's #1 dating site Meetic and Europe's leading online bank Boursorama. He also acts as a venture partner for Wellington Partners, mentoring other European entrepreneurs. And he helps bolster innovation and entrepreneurship in Europe through his conference LeWeb, Europe's leading web conference for businesses and web 2.0 innovators.

Loic took an active role in French President's Sarkozy's campaign, helping galvanize thousands of bloggers to support the candidate. Recently, Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web. Loic was also named "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum. Originally from the South of France, Loic lives in San Francisco, California

Conrad Burke - President and CEO, Innovalight

Conrad Burke is President & CEO of Innovalight, Inc., a solar energy startup based in Sunnyvale, CA. Conrad was born in Dublin, Ireland and has lived in the United States for the past 15 years. He has over 18 years of guiding innovative solar technologies, semiconductors and optoelectronics into the commercial market.

His career has spanned research and development, product management, marketing, sales and venture capital funding in major global corporations as well as startup companies. He has worked for leading US venture capital firm, Sevin Rosen Funds as well as companies such as AT&T, Lucent Technologies and NEC Corporation. Conrad also has deep international experience having lived in and run major operations in Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Conrad recently represented Innovalight at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland to receive The Technology Pioneer Award for Environmental and Energy Technologies. He has a MS in Physics from Trinity College, Dublin, a BS in Physics from University College, Dublin, Ireland and he has also attended The London Business School.

Ilya Shirakov - Co-Founder, MoiKrug

Ilya co-founded and built MoiKrug, the largest social network for Russian speaking professionals. In 2007 MoiKrug was acquired by Yandex, Russian leading search engine and portal. Ilya holds a masters degree in mathematics from Moscow State University and economics degree from the New Economic School. Currently, Ilya is a second year MBA student at Stanford.

Marten Mickos - Senior Vice President, Database Group, Sun Microsystems Inc.; former CEO, MySQL

Marten Mickos oversees the database group within Sun's Software division. He joined Sun in 2008 through its acquisition of MySQL AB. As CEO of MySQL for six years, Mickos helped grow that company from a start-up to the second-largest independent vendor of open source software in the world. Prior to MySQL, Mickos held multi-national CEO and senior executive positions in his native Finland. He holds a M.Sc. in technical physics from Helsinki University of Technology

Peter Vesterbacka - Founder, ConnectedDay

Peter is the founder / co-founder of several companies including Some Bazaar, ConnectedDay and Star Wreck Studios. He is also active as an advisor to several startups in Europe. Prior to his life as an entrepreneur, Peter worked for HP in several communications industry related roles. While at HP Peter founded the HP Mobile E-Services Bazaar, a global innovation & corporate partnership program that BoozAllenHamilton declared an industry benchmark. Peter is also co-founder and the original initiator of MobileMonday, one of the most succesful mobile industry communities globally.

Matti Saarinen - CTO and Co-founder, WhatAMap

Matti Saarinen is a Finnish software entrepreneur with 10 years experience in various positions in Finnish software industry. He graduated from Helsinki University of Technology with a major in software technology. Mr. Saarinen's technical expertise is based on work in Nokia Research Center and Teleca Plc, where he gained deep understanding of mobile software. His responsibilities included software project management, developing new software concepts, and technical implementation. 

After several years in large corporations, Mr. Saarinen founded a mobile software consultancy which provided software services to international clients in Finland and Sweden. In June 2007, Mr. Saarinen founded Whatamap.com Ltd with his brother Antti. Whatamap.com is a custom map service, which received its first round funding from Mr. Risto Siilasmaa, a Finnish business angel.

Michel Wendell - General Partner, Nexit Ventures

Michel Wendell is a General Partner and co-founder of Nexit Ventures - a mobile-wireless focused venture capital fund with offices in Finland, Sweden and Silicon Valley. Over the past 10 years, Mr. Wendell has made VC investments in propositions ranging from wireless components and infrastructure companies to mobile server and middleware software and mobile applications. 

Prior to his years as a venture capitalist, Mr. Wendell held executive positions in several large and small high tech companies, his latest position being VP- Business Development at Cadence Design Systems, Inc. in San Jose, CA. Before co-founding Nexit Ventures in the US, Mr. Wendell had been on the founding team or started tech companies in three different countries, namely France, Sweden and Finland. Mr. Wendell also serves as the Honorary Consul to Finland in the San Francisco and Silicon Valley area.

Oliver Baltuch - President, Futuremark North America

Oliver Baltuch is a 20 year Silicon Valley veteran of several companies including National Semiconductor, Vadem, Standard Microsystems, NVIDIA, NetCell, Chartered Semiconductor and Futuremark. With a B.Sc. in Theoretical Physics from Concordia University in Montreal, and an M.Eng. in Physics Engineering from Cornell, Oliver started out as a Yield Improvement Engineer in a 3 Micron Bipolar Wafer Fab and then proceeded into Marketing after working in the Fairchild Research Center 0.8um CMOS in the late 1980’s. He has then worked in various marketing roles from Staff Strategic Marketing Engineer at National up to VP Sales and Marketing WW for Futuremark Oy and President of its subsidiary Futuremark Inc. 

An avid musician, photographer and surfer, Oliver plays Ukulele with the Aloha Island Serenaders, has written several children’s books and is currently learning to pilot a small plane.

Pekka Parnanen - Head, Finpro Silicon Valley

Pekka Parnanen has more than 20 years experience in international business in IT and Communications industries. He has been helping companies to establish or re-establish themselves in the international markets with specially deep experience in establishing companies and partnerships in North America, Japan, Europe and Asia. Pekka's experience has enabled companies to go through accelerated learning curves in establishing successful business and technology strategies driving successful international market penetration. Pekka is currently the Head of Finpro Silicon Valley where he also was key in establishing the FinNode (Finnish Innovation Center in Silicon Valley) in 2007. Prior to Finpro, Pekka was Director for Global Business Development for Solid Information Technology. Prior to Solid, he was VP Global Marketing and Sales for Cybelius Software and also set up the company in the US and prior to Cybelius he was President for T.V.I - TEMET Vision Industry in Helsinki and Atlanta, GA, USA.

Dr. Christopher J. Horn - Vice Chairman of the Board, Co-Founder, IONA Technologies

Dr. Christopher J. Horn is co-founder and currently vice chairman of the board of IONA Technologies (established 1991) Dublin, Ireland. He was the initial developer of Orbix® and held the joint offices of IONA's president, chief executive officer and chairman of the board from IONA's inception until May 2000. He served as the chairman of the board of IONA from May 2000 to May 2003 when he re-assumed the CEO position, a post he held until his appointment to vice-chairman in April 2005.

Dr. Horn has been a non-executive director of a number of privately held software companies and business associations and advisor to a number of venture capital firms. He is a former Director of Science Foundation Ireland, a former chair of the "Expert Group on Future Skills", Ireland's Educational Technology Investment Fund, and former chair of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce eCity working group; and a former chairman of the Irish Management Institute. Dr Horn regularly contributes to debate on Ireland's high-tech industry and is a member of the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) working group at IBEC and was the founding chairman of the Ireland China Association. Dr Horn is a former member of the Board of Trinity College Dublin.

He is currently the non-executive chairman of China Crest Professionals, a Beijing based consultancy firm specialising in investment in China; the non-executive chairman of Cloudsmith, a US and Swedish based company offering novel services to the global software development community; and non-executive chairman of LeCayla, an Irish firm offering billing and metering services for software vendors offering pay-as-you-go and SaaS business models. He is the non executive chairman of the strategic board of CTVR, a major national telecommunications research project in the areas of cognitive radio, dynamic spectrum management and advanced photonics, and involving in particular Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, TCD and a number of Irish Universities. He is also the non executive chairman of the Science Gallery, a novel outreach facility to the public on matters of national science policy.

Dr. Horn received his PhD in Computer Science in 1983. From 1984 until 1994, he was a lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Trinity College, Dublin, where he was involved in many pan-European IT research projects involving distributed computing. He also worked in Brussels, Belgium for the European Commission, and was an integral part of the ten-year "Esprit" program designed to improve the continent's technology industry. In 2001 he received an honorary Doctor of Science from Trinity College Dublin and became an honorary Fellow of Engineers Ireland. Dr Horn also received the Gold Medal for Industry from the Industry and Commerce Committee of the Royal Dublin Society in the same year.

Sergei Burkov - Google Russia and Russian Entrepreneur

Sergei Burkov, Ph.D. was the first head of Google's engineering center in Moscow, Russia. Before joining Google in 2006 he co-founded and led three startup companies. Dulance was the Long Tail shopping search engine (acquired by Google). Bilbo Innovations, Inc. invented and brought to market STEP ON IT! computer pedals. Invincible Data Systems pioneered transparent disk and e-mail encryption (acquired by VASCO Data Security (VDSI)). He also co-founded the American Business Association of Russian Expatriates (AmBAR).

Dr. Burkov is a former research physicist who held appointments at top American universities, including Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Burkov received Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics and M.S. in physics with Honors, from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

Dr. Alessandro Zago MBA PhD

Since 2005, Alessandro Zago is Director of Venture Technology of Siemens Technology-To-Business Center (TTB) in Berkeley, California – the early-stage Venture Capital arm and new businesses incubator of Siemens. At TTB Dr. Zago is responsible for sourcing, evaluating, structuring, negotiating and executing investments in early-stage high-tech start-ups in a broad range of sectors, including Clean-tech, Industry and Healthcare. He is also actively involved both in developing processes for start-up investments and in developing relationships with selected Venture Capital firms and business angel organizations. 

In addition to this, Dr. Zago is currently interim-CEO of Progressive Cooling Solutions, where he assists with strategic planning, operations and fund raising. He also currently serves as Board Director for Progressive Cooling, NetCrystal and H2Volt. 

Prior to his current role, from 1999 to 2005, Dr. Zago worked at the BMW Group, holding several challenging positions of increasing responsibilities at the Research & Innovation Center, at the Technology Office, and at the International Purchasing Office. Over the years, he has gained unique experience and competence in managing technology-based innovation, developing at the same time new business relationships and partnerships with external partners. 

Dr. Zago holds an Executive MBA from INSEAD and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with a MSc. in Aeronautics&Astronautics from Stanford University.

Erik Rutten

Erik Rutten is Senior Investment Manager for DSM Venturing B.V., subsidiary of Royal DSM N.V., a Netherlands-based specialty performance materials and life sciences company. In his current role as Senior Investment Manager, Erik is investing and taking Board of Director positions in start-up companies with a clear strategic fit with existing and future DSM activities. DSM employs 23,000 people and has annual revenues of $12 Bn. Based in California, Mr. Rutten joined DSM in 1985. 

Erik started in the Corporate Research organization heading a small explorative research department working in creating new products and new business in the polymeric material area. From corporate research a switch to New Business Development Manager at DSM Special Products was made. After three years setting up new business for DSM Custom Manufacturing in the specialty chemicals business, he switched back to R&D management world wide responsible for research and technical service for DSM Polyester Coating Resins. 

In early 2001, Mr. Rutten moved to the USA taking up the responsibility as Vice President-R&D at DSM Pharma Chemicals based in North Carolina. After returning to the Netherlands in 2004 he was Project Director for a large organizational restructuring project and later on he joined the DSM Innovation Center in 2006 where he was heading the Innovation Office initiating and running different programs to improve innovation capabilities of DSM world wide. Mr. Rutten holds a MSc. in Chemical Technology (Polymeric Materials) from University Twente in the Netherlands.

Anup Jacob

Anup Jacob is a founding Partner of Virgin Green Fund and a member of its Investment Committee. VGF is a private equity fund focused on growth capital investments in the renewable energy and resource efficiency sectors. Prior to VGF, Anup was an investment professional with TPG and a partner in TPG’s Aqua Fund, which focused on growth capital investments in the water and renewable energy sectors. 

Anup currently serves on the board of Solyndra Inc., a California-based thin-film solar company. He started his career at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette in New York and India in the Global Power and Merchant Banking groups, after having previously served on the board of Jain Irrigation Systems, Ltd. Anup is involved in several children’s charities and environmental charities in India and the US. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago.

Sebastiaan la Bastide

Sebastiaan la Bastide is Head of the New Concept Incubator for Roche Diabetes Care, in Palo Alto. This innovation group is chartered to identify and develop new growth opportunities for Roche Diabetes Care. Before he started this group in 2007, he worked 5 years with Roche Diabetes Care in Germany and Switzerland, where he was a.o. responsible for strategic planning and program management for the Advanced Systems group. His current mission is to develop solutions for the type 2 diabetes epidemic, and to promote innovation within a large multinational organization. 

Prior to joining Roche, Sebastiaan worked six years in the Semiconductor Industry, where he experienced a variety of different roles from Graduate Researcher at the Philips Research Labs to software engineer, project leader and product manager at ASML, a world leading provider of capital equipment. 

Sebastiaan is a Dutch national, somewhat fluent in Dutch, English, German and Spanish. He holds a Masters degree in Measurement and Control Systems from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, as well as an MBA from IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.

Jason Yotopoulos

Jason Yotopoulos is Senior Vice-President and Head of the Global Business Incubator at SAP, which identifies and accelerates the commercialization of material business opportunities adjacent to SAP’s core business by incubating new initiatives within the company. He was previously Vice-President, Corporate Strategy Group in the Office of the CEO at SAP where he helped drive corporate strategy management, covering key areas of SAP strategy formulation and execution, strategic performance management, and M&A strategy. 

Jason served as a partner with Technology Partners investing in enterprise and internet infrastructure investments until mid-2004 when he joined SAP. He began his career in venture capital in 1993 with Patricof & Co. Ventures, now Apax Partners. Jason has served as Product Manager for InfoSeek Corporation in its early stages and held positions in Corporate Planning at Raychem Corporation and in Business Development at Sun Microsystems. He was previously a management consultant with Gemini Consulting where he managed strategy projects for technology companies. Jason holds a B.S. in Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Alexander Fries

Alexander Fries founded Ecosystem Ventures in December 2004 to address the growing need for investment and support in European technologies and pre-seed-stage companies. He is also founder of the European American Angels Club, a Silicon Valley-based organization that actively invests in European startups.

Alex brings over 15 years of progressive experience in founding, funding and managing global businesses that provide technology, products and services to telecommunication operators, enterprises, and consumers. Most recently, he co-founded and led the marketing, business development, and strategic partnerships teams for SVOX AG, a venture-backed company in Switzerland. On top of SVOX, Mr. Fries has successfully developed three other start-up companies. 

Alex began his career as a telecommunications analyst for Credit Suisse, and went on to build and prepare MCI WorldCom in Switzerland for the European telecommunications liberalization. He then moved on to work as Executive Vice President of sales and marketing for Advance Visual Communications, a Boston-based venture-backed content company sold to USWeb, and as a senior market manager for Europe and Latin America at the Lucent Technologies Wireless Broadband Division. 

Mr. Fries received a BA in finance and an M.B.A. in telecommunications and international marketing from the University of San Francisco. Prior to moving to the United States, Alex accomplished a Swiss Banking Diploma at UBS. He has lived in Hong-Kong, Switzerland, Chile, and the USA, and speaks fluent German, Spanish, French, and English. He also heads the Club Entrepreneur, a sub-chapter of the Swiss-American Chamber of Commerce in Northern California, where he is also a member of the Board of Directors.

Andrus Aaslaid

Andrus Aaslaid is Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Estonia with responsibility for setting up the Microsoft eGovernment Innovation Center in Tallinn. His current work focuses on profiling eGovernment solutions for partners and deploying new generation cloud and web services in Estonia. The MS Innovation Center was created in January 2009.

Before joining Microsoft, Andrus worked in numerous privately held ICT companies in Estonia as CTO and engineer coordinating software and hardware design for Silicon Valley companies. Andrus was also responsible for the political-level coordination of the state IT development and e-government affairs while working as a counselor to the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications during 2003-2005.

Andrus is a graduate of the Estonian Business School and has also studied Information Sciences at the Tallinn University of Technology. He has professional level electronics skills as well as software engineering and project management skills.

Mariana Bozesan

Mariana Bozesan is a serial high-tech entrepreneur, angel investor, Venture Capitalist (VC), computer scientist and researcher, a leading authority in consciousness leadership in business, and a philanthropist. Born and raised in Romania, she is fluent in English, German, French and Romanian, and is conversational in Italian. She is also author of the Diet for a New Life book series and life mastering programs.

Mariana has been an angel investor/VC since 1995 and was one of the initial investors in Cybernet AG (today PSINet), which was the first Internet company that went public on the German stock exchange. She was an early member of the Munich Business Angel Network (MBA AG), and is an ongoing investor in high-tech companies and medical device manufacturers. Moreover, she has invested in Business Angels and VC funds in Silicon Valley and Europe, including The Angels Forum in Palo Alto and EarlyBird Venture Capital in Munich, Germany. 

Bozesan is also founder, President and CEO of Infobahn Romania SRL and Infobahn International GmbH. Prior to Infobahn, Mariana was a senior executive at Oracle Corporation, where she was Director of Business Development for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She also worked for Digital Equipment Corporation, now Hewlett-Packard, where she was Open Networks Marketing Manager based in Paris, France and Marketing Manager for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Munich, Germany.

As a serial entrepreneur, Mariana is the Co-founder and President of the Sageera Institute, a Silicon Valley based social-conscious and philanthropy-driven health and lifestyle company, which is currently supporting more than 33 humanitarian organizations worldwide. As a humanitarian, Bozesan served as a board member of The International Museum of Women in San Francisco, California, is member of the Founders Council of The Chopra Foundation, an advisory board member of The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV), and the President and Founder of The Bozesan Foundation. The Bozesan Foundation is a privately held philanthropic organization, which contributes to the education of young people in Africa, China, India, and in former communist countries. Her expertise is the successful application of the Consciousness Leadership Model that she has developed to bridge conscious business with personal fulfillment and global sustainability.

Educated at Stanford University and the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, Mariana holds a MS degree (Diplom Informatikerin) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, and a BS degree in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Karlsruhe. In June of 2009, she is also scheduled to complete her PhD in Transpersonal Psychology at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto, California.

Sten Tamkivi - Chief Evangelist, Skype Estonia

Sten Tamkivi is Skype's Chief Evangelist, building relationships with engineering communities, media, governments and academia around the world. Based in Tallinn, he also looks after Skype Estonia, Skype's largest office globally as local General Manager.

Sten joined Skype in 2005 and has held various executive positions as the Head of Operations, overseeing our sites and servers, internal IT, security, and productivity tools; as manager of the engineering for Skype Devices; General Manager of Skype's eCommerce activities, responsible for developing next-generation commerce around Skype's core communication offering; and more recently as GM of Desktop clients, focussing on the development of landmark Skype 4.0 for Windows release.

Prior to Skype, Sten was business development director at Helmes, a Tallinn-based software development and IT-consulting company where his client roster included major regional financial institutions, telecoms and utilities.

Having begun his career as a programmer and web designer, Sten co-founded and managed Halo Interactive DDB Estonia, the country's first full service digital media agency. It was at Halo, while working on a web portal project, that he first met the future founders and core engineers of Skype.

Sten has studied Public Relations and Communication at the University of Tartu, Estonia. He lives in Tallinn where he cooks gourmet meals for his wife, son and daughter.

Christian Bason - Innovation Manager, MindLab, Denmark

Christian Bason is Director of MindLab, an inter-governmental unit for citizen-centered innovation. It is MindLabs mission to involve citizens and the business community directly in the development of new public policy and services. MindLab facilitates innovation processes, including qualitative data collection and field work, design workshops, concept development, prototyping, test and experimentation. MindLabs staff is multidisciplinary encompassing core competencies in anthropology, social and political science, humanities, and design. It is MindLabs vision to be a leading global example of how to drive societal innovation. MindLab is owned by the Danish Ministry of Economic and Business Affairs, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Employment. 

Christian Bason was previously head of the public organisation & leadership practice of Ramboll Management Consulting, a major Danish-owned professional service firm. During his 10 years there, he led a large number of studies, evaluations and analyses for a range of public, NGO and private organisations at local, regional, national and international level. As part of his consulting work he was stationed for one year in New York City. 

Christian holds a Master's degree in Political Science from Aarhus University (Denmark), supplemented with executive education from, amongst others, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard Business School.

Christian is an expert on innovation, public administration, leadership, strategy and human resource management, and is the author of numerous columns and articles, as well as the books in Danish "Put the Citizen into Play – How to Involve Citizens and Businesses in Public Sector Innovation" (Gyldendal Business, forthcoming 2009), "Innovating Welfare – Leading Fresh Thinking in the Public Sector" (Borsens Forlag 2007), "New Faces of Work – Leading the Employee of the Future" (Borsens Forlag 2003), and "Efficiency Through Competition" (Ministry of Finance, 2000).

Dr. Sven Schade - Policy Officer, Directorate ‘Innovation’, Directorate General Enterprise & Industry, European Commission, Brussels

Since joining the European Commission in early 2006, Sven Schade has worked on different aspects of “Better support to innovation in Europe”. These projects have included the reformulation of innovation support and technology transfer services in the ‘Enterprise Europe Network’ – a support network for SMEs that now spans 44 countries including the US. Other responsibilities include the development of ‘international aspects of innovation support’ and a number of innovative projects for new approaches to support technology transfer and the development of ‘Regional Innovation Strategies’ in particular in Romania and Lithuania. 

Before joining the European Commission Sven worked for a brief period as a freelance consultant for innovation projects in Germany; and for over two years as an expert advisor for the establishment of incubator and cluster initiatives in Lithuania. He also served for more than two years in the Bavarian Technology Agency (Bayern Innovativ) delivering transnational technology transfer services to SMEs. 

Dr. Schade holds a PhD (German ‘Dr.’) degree in geography and a Masters (German ‘Dipl.’) in geoecology (environmental sciences) from the University of Bayreuth, Germany. During his university career he was responsible for different research projects in Madagascar and Tanzania. He has a strong interest in all questions related to sustainable development – in Europe as well as in overseas countries.

Robert Trezona - Head of Research and Development, The Carbon Trust, UK

Robert Trezona is responsible for all the Carbon Trust’s investments in research and development and has led the introduction of the “Directed Research” programme, which develops and capitalises entrepreneurial activity in early-stage, breakthrough low carbon technologies. 

Robert is a materials scientist by training, and has a First Class degree and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He has five years experience as an engineer working on fuel cell technology with Johnson Matthey and then Ceres Power, where he was Head of Fuel Cell Development. Before joining the Carbon Trust, Robert worked for management consultants McKinsey & Company, where he focussed on strategic and operational issues in the energy, utilities and basic materials sectors.