This event was streamed live on the Academy's YouTube channel with the opportunity for live viewers to submit questions.
What do some of the UK’s most exciting innovators from the worlds of engineering research and enterprise have to say about technology and the future?
How will emerging technologies shape our lives in the year ahead, and what challenges will need to be addressed to ensure they have a positive impact on society? What era-defining technological innovations are on the horizon, and what is just hype?
Join us as we attempt to answer these questions and more in a hybrid panel discussion chaired by The Times’ Technology Business Editor Katie Prescott. Guests will hear expert predictions about the impact of engineering and technology on our future, and will also have an opportunity to put questions to our panellists.
Our panel of speakers includes:
- Professor Daniele Faccio FRSE, a Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies and Professor of Quantum Technologies, University of Glasgow
- Professor Cathy Craig, CEO and co-founder of INCISIV
- Dr Simon Thomas FREng, CEO of Paragraf
Dr Simon Thomas FREng
Simon Thomas is a founder and the CEO of Paragraf, a pioneering graphene electronic device company. He is a materials engineer whose research, developments and inventions have enabled the world’s first scalable graphene electronics products to be achieved, solving a 15+ year challenge for industry. Simon is a Shott Scale Up Accelerator alumnus and the chair of the steering committee.
Katie Presscott
Katie Prescott is one of the UK’s best-known technology and business journalists. She is a familiar writer and voice to millions as The Times’ Technology Business Editor and previously, the Senior Lead Business Presenter for Radio 4’s Today Programme and a Business Correspondent across BBC News. For readers, listeners and viewers across The Times’ platforms, Katie reports on the dynamic changes across the tech, media and telecoms sectors and their impact on business and our everyday lives. She’s a weekly columnist for the newspaper’s award-winning business section and hosts some of the major events staged by The Times. At the BBC, Katie worked across all the corporation’s major news outlets as the on-screen face and voice explaining and analysing the tumultuous changes wrought by COVID-19, the European debt crisis and new technology, along with the challenges of sustainability and climate change.
Daniele Faccio FRSE
Daniele Faccio FRSE is a Royal Academy Chair in Emerging Technologies and a professor in quantum technologies at the University of Glasgow, where he leads the Extreme Light group. His research, funded by the EPSRC, Dstl, the Leverhulme Trust, the EU Quantum Flagship program and the Royal Academy of Engineering, focuses on the physics of light, on how we harness light to answer fundamental questions and on how we harness light to improve society.
Carly Kind
Carly is the Director of the Ada Lovelace Institute. A human rights lawyer and leading authority on the intersection of technology policy and human rights, Carly has advised industry, government and non-profit organisations on digital rights, privacy and data protection, and corporate accountability in the technology sphere. She has worked with the European Commission, the Council of Europe, numerous UN bodies and a range of civil society organisations. She was formerly Legal Director of Privacy International, an NGO dedicated to promoting data rights and governance.
Professor Cathy Craig
Cathy Craig is a professor of experimental psychology at Ulster University. With over 25 years’ research experience in performance psychology and more than 100 scientific publications, she is a recognized global ‘thought leader’ in the use of virtual reality to understand and improve human performance. With a burning desire to get her research out of the lab to make a difference to people’s lives, she started INCISIV in 2018 to develop VR-enabled solutions to help people perform at their best. Whether it be a budding young goalkeeper trying to get that extra 1% to pull off a match winning save (CleanSheet), or an elite ice-hockey player trying to return to competition following a head injury (MOViR), INCISIV’s VR technologies are bringing benefits to the wider world of sport, health and well-being.