Ben Pritchard Email & Phone Number

Reading, England, United Kingdom

A new chapter in the world of Research & Technology for Defence C4I Systems begins...

Reading, England, United Kingdom

I helped define the business case for a new Autonomy Technology Centre to be formed for Thales in the UK and then brought it to life. As Chief Technologist in the ATC, I am responsible for our technology and innovation strategy, our academic partnerships, and ensuring that our autonomy-related capabilities are modular, re-usable, and part of a common reference architecture.

Reading, United Kingdom

In this new role I created a research strategy for Autonomous Systems and implemented that, using both in-house resources and external academic/industrial partners. This brought together disparate threads of autonomy-related research activities stretching across Thales' various market-facing activities.The focus was less about *driverless* vehicles, and more about an abstract, genuinely autonomous, artificial intelligence. How can we prove it to be "safe" in a complete set of operational scenarios? How can we verify it will always meet security standards? How can operators and machines share tasks and exchange a common situation awareness?We created strategic partnerships in UK universities, generated and protected new intellectual property, published papers and de-risked new technologies for use in our products and services.

London, United Kingdom

Inside my 1,300 person, circa £200m pa business, I have been successful at transforming the innovation culture and capability of the company. I defined and lead the improvement actions that lead to the company being accredited as an ‘Investor in Innovations’ with the Innovation Institute (IKE) in Nov 2016. I helped transform GTS UK into a trusted, thought-leading R&D centre, celebrated inside the Thales Group and acclaimed by our domestic customers. During extended absences of the Technical Director, I would routinely act as his Deputy.

Weybridge

Supporting the newly appointed CTO for Thales UK run the network of Technical Directorates. • Defined and implemented a new strategic investment planning processRe-launched the annual planning cycle, using multi-criteria decision analysis techniques to create a balanced (R&D) investment portfolio• Rolled out processes for managing product policy and low-TRL developmentsAligned dozens of processes to a single, coherent management system. Wrote and delivered training. Lead the change management process to completion.

Reading, United Kingdom

• TopFlight Satcom – Systems Engineer in testing team, completing the Integration, Verification and Validation of aircraft voice and data comms system• nuVa – Project Manager for product development and launch of real-time, table-top virtual collaboration system, now licensed to and sold by Cereno• Project Manager – Lead portfolio of low-TRL projects in HMIs and security• Dstl Secondment – 6 month secondment to Information Management team• Developer – C++ and C# programs for Information Management research

Swindon, England, United Kingdom

I have joined the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council's Strategic Advisory Team for Information Communication Technologies. I have started a 3-year term representing Autonomous Systems research.

London, United Kingdom

In recognition of my personal contribution to the accreditation of Thales GTS UK as an 'Investor in Innovations', I became a Fellow of the Institution myself.

Bristol, United Kingdom

As part of Thales' strategic agreement with the University of Bristol and our Prosperity Partnership, I am now a visiting member of staff.

Southampton, England, United Kingdom

This Industry to Academia secondment, enabled by the RAEng, will see me research Integrated Mission Management for Autonomous Systems with Thales' strategic research partners at the University of Southampton.Navies and other maritime users expect to perform ever more complex tasks for longer, further away, at lower cost, at higher reliability and with fewer people. Our research will understand how human supervisors can best interact with squads of mixed maritime autonomous systems (in the air, on the surface and under the water) to maximise human-system team performance.

Meng (Hons), Electrical And Electronic Engineering, 1St

Education record