I provide leadership and direction for innovation and knowledge exchange activity across the Research Institute to generate income growth and increase successful external partnerships. Working collaboratively across the university, taking responsibility for the development and delivery of high performing services in the Research Institute to deliver the University’s operational priorities and strategic aims.ROLE SPECIFIC RESPONSIBILITIES • Provide leadership for innovation and knowledge exchange activity across the Research Institute, working closely with other senior leaders and senior academics to seize new external funding opportunities and generate income growth, delivering the aspirations of the Creating Knowledge Implementation Plan. . • Drive a pipeline of commercial and long-term strategic partnerships to increase income, impact and reputation • Pro-actively provide foresight of future funding calls and strategic opportunities through leading the Institute’s activity in growing relationships with key funding contacts • Lead collaborations across the Research Institutes with other Research Institute Innovation Managers and Specialist Innovation Managers to maximise R&I opportunities• Act as a Project Director in establishing and leading multi-disciplinary, multi-partner project teams across the Research Institutes and Centres to bid for strategic research and innovation funding opportunities. • Provide leadership for responses to external research and innovation partnership enquiries, ensuring a joined-up approach to client engagement and management, working with other University functions to maximise the full potential of business relationships. • Promote the intellectual property portfolio and technology transfer prospects of the Research Institutes and work with the IP and Commercialisation Manager to maximise value through successful licensing of University IP

As Programme Lead for Grow MedTech I was responsible for day-to-day leadership and programme management – reporting to the Director of Medical Technologies Innovation at the University of Leeds. Focusing on technology convergence and the de-risking of technologies, Grow Med-Tech brought together leading technology and translational expertise in the Leeds and Sheffield cityregions in a patient-focussed and commercially-driven innovation system. Aiming to enhanceproductivity and economic growth in the UK medical technology sector, while addressing theevolving health needs of the population.Forming part of the Technology Innovation Management my role also entailed: - Working with companies to understand their technology development and innovation needs, and barriers to engaging with the knowledge base.- Collaborating with clinicians, patients, and NHS organisations to identify local and national challenges and priorities.- Strategically matching academics and companies, some of whom may not currently apply their know-how to med-tech challenges, to create combination and convergent technologies that are ripe for commercial development.- working with academics and company partners to validate and de-risk new technologies to progress them towards market deployment and safe clinical practice.- managing a pool of proof of market, feasibility, and proof of commercial concept funding – leading to: validated and de-risked technology opportunities with established market need; technical prototypes that are positioned to secure proof of commercial concept funding; and product prototypes that have been de-risked to provide investor confidence.

I was a Technology Innovation Manager working in the Medical Technologies Innovation team on the Translate: Medical Technologies Programme. Translate was focussed on developing innovation practice and capability within the partner Leeds City Region Higher Education Institutes (University of Bradford, University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett University and University of York). The focus was to provide early stage research translation awareness and sector-specific innovation skills and expertise.As a Technology Innovation Manager, I played a key role in the delivery of a challenging and multi-disciplinary programme, which sought to substantially accelerate innovation and reduce the time-to-clinical trials/market in this emerging sector.Main Duties and Responsibilities:- Helped to identify innovation capability needs in LCR university partners and embed innovation and translation know-how. - Provided specific expertise to support the generation, evaluation and prioritisation of potential opportunities arising from areas of strength of each LCR university partner, which included orthopaedic devices, cardiovascular devices, regenerative devices, skin and wound care, diagnostics, surgical tools, drug delivery devices, imaging and radiotherapy, precision manufacture, pre-clinical simulation, infection control, assistive technologies and biomaterials.- Worked with academics across the five partner universities to write proposals to secure external funding for projects involving applied research innovation and translation. - Established a clear picture of the current and future Intellectual Property (IP) landscape across the LCR partner university MedTech areas of strength (in terms of the Unique Selling Point (USP) of new innovations, the market opportunities and where the innovations sat within the value chain) - Managed relationships and worked collaboratively and effectively with the breadth of strategic partners and stakeholders.

Areas of research interest: Self-assembling peptides, spinal therapies, cell scaffolds, glycosaminoglycans, hydrogels, spinal mechanics, regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, molecular self-assembly and nanostructured materials.- responsible for the characterisation, optimisation and testing of self-assembling peptides for use in spinal nucleus augmentation. - heavily involved in developing the project commercialisation strategy in close collaboration with the technology innovation team and patent attorney.- co-chair monthly research group meetings of around 50 people and have been instrumental in incorporating regular clinical engagement in the spinal research meetings and setting up of academic surgical observations.- responsible for a third of an advanced topic lecture module to 3rd year Biomedical science students entitled the Ageing Spine, including exam question writing and marking.- managing director of the winning team at ChemistryYES, an innovative competition developed to raise awareness of the commercialisation of bioscience ideas among early career researchers. - participated in numerous public outreach activities such as taking part in the European Researchers night in York, science festivals and guest public lectures. - successfully completed PGCert in Innovation and Management, in order to gain a wider knowledge of IP, technology transfer and project management.- was part of a high level delegation visit from the University of Leeds to Singapore in 2013 to establish potential international collaborations.- facilitated a clinical vertebroplasty workshop in London in 2013.- based within the School of Chemistry and a member of the Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (iMBE) at the University of Leeds, which focuses on work in four areas - joint replacement, spine, cartilage substitution and tissue engineering. The iMBE is one of the largest medical engineering centres in Europe and an established leader in the field.

University of Leeds-Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund - SecondmentI was awarded funding for 3 months to allow me the opportunity to undertake a secondment to JRI Orthopaedics. JRI is a privately owned British manufacturer of innovative implant products, which include joint replacement systems and orthobiologics. The main opportunity presented through this secondment was for two-way knowledge transfer. By carrying out this secondment intelligence was shared on challenges and barriers of developing new technologies. I also gained a deeper understanding of how both JRI and SMEs operate within this field of medical technology and regenerative medicine.During my time at JRI I investigated the classification of medical devices and the associated regulator pathway for national and international territories (e.g. UK, Europe and the United States set out by MHRA, EMA and FDA). I also looked into the classifications of regenerative medicinal products e.g. Advanced-Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) and explored the associated regulatory framework. Finally I also learnt aspects of innovation and research translation by working within the technology research team. I gained an understanding of processes involved in the assessment of new technologies by contributing to evaluation models for early stage technologies.

Specialist techniques: Handling and dissecting bovine tail intervertebral discs, TEM, Rheology, mechanical testing using the Instron.- presented at international conferences and been named as an inventor on a patent application. - participated in numerous public outreach activities such as taking part in the SET for Britain awards, the Make Some Noise competition, science festivals and guest public lectures.

Thesis: Self-assembling peptide/glycosaminoglycan hydrogels for spinal therapies. Specialist techniques: 1HNMR, FTIR, CDUV, TEM, Rheology and solid phase peptide synthesis, as well as being experienced in handling and dissecting animal spinal and tail motion segments and intervertebral discs. - chaired the postgraduate student staff committee being instrumental in the organisation of their many social events and annual conference.- visited and collaborated with world-class theoreticians at the University of Strasbourg.- volunteer teacher, president and secretary at the University swing dance society

Year in industry working at AstraZeneca in their analytical research department, working on support for late phase clinical trials and method development.Specialist techniques: HPLC, GC, MS, KF titrations and various tablet testing techniques.Industrial placement year for my MChem.