Ashley is Professor of Design Innovation, Postgraduate Research Lead in the school of design at the Royal College of Art and Head of Programme for the MRes Healthcare Design delivered with Imperial College. He completed a BA in Furniture Design at Nottingham Trent University and received his Masters from the RCA. Doctoral research focussed on translocated making at the University of Technology in Sydney exploring cultural transfer between diverse socio-spatial groups in a series of collaborative practice-based experimental design projects. Research themes include; design resilience, innovation methods, globalization design, cultural transfer, experimental design and design for safety. Over 75 academic publications ranging from books and book chapters to academic papers and documentary films. Fellowships include the higher education authority, the design research society and a visiting professorship in Innovation Design at the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing. Current funded projects include tackling climate change via NEMO - a new economic model for the oceans developing an AI sensor package to survey objects on a 6,000 miles voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Greenland to the UK. Ashley has supervised over 20 PhD’s.He has an international reputation for collaborative interdisciplinary research and design projects in over 20 countries including Australia, China, Ghana, Greenland, India, Israel and Palestine, Japan, South Korea, Mali, Thailand, South Africa and the USA. Academic commercial design and research projects have been conducted with a large number of commercial partners including Airbus Industries, BBC, British Airways, Coca-Cola, Ford Europe, Huawei, O2, Oppo, Philips, Samsung, Swarovski, LG and Unilever. Diplomat design partnership was established with Matthew Kavanagh in 1999 and he continues to consult internationally on innovation strategy.