Awardee Excellence Community inaugural event - London

Billy Boyle MBE FREng

Billy Boyle MBE FREng has a vision is to change the way we currently diagnose and monitor serious disease. He is the co-founder and CEO of Owlstone Inc., whose mission is to become the global leader in the non-invasive detection of cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory diseases – in the process saving 100,000 lives and $1.5 billion in healthcare costs. Billy received The Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal and was a winner of the 2018 MacRobert Award; he was then made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2020 and an MBE in 2021. Billy sits on the CRUK Early Detection and Diagnosis Research Committee and was previously a judge for the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Pioneer award and a trustee of the Linacre Institute. He likes to combine a love of running with raising money for charities such as CRUK.

Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE

Hayaatun is CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation. She co-chairs with the Science Minister the government’s Business Innovation Forum and co-chaired with Sir Lewis Hamilton his Commission on improving Black representation in motorsport. She is a trustee of various charities, member of the government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council and Digital Skills Council and NXD at construction company Laing O’Rourke. She has been named as one of the ‘Inspiring 50’ women in tech in Europe and one of the most influential women in both UK engineering and UK tech. She has a Masters in Biochemistry (MBiochem) from Oxford and a PhD from Cancer Research UK/UCL. She is a Fellow of the IET, Honorary Professor at UCL and Honorary Fellow at The Queen’s College, Oxford. She has received honorary doctorates from UCL, Imperial College London, Newcastle, Brunel, Huddersfield and Southampton, as well as a Science Suffrage Award and the Engineering Professor’s Council President’s Medal. She was a finalist for the Veuve Clicquot Bold Woman Award and was made a CBE for services to International Engineering in 2019. Prior to her current roles, she was Deputy CEO at the Academy and served as Committee Specialist and later Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Science & Technology Committee.

Fran Scott

Fran Scott is an accomplished engineering presenter, maker and pyrotechnician. She has been listed in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 – London’s most influential people – and is the only person to have presented on three different BAFTA-nominated engineering television programmes. A scientist by training (MSc neuroscience) and an engineer at heart, Fran is an expert prop builder and science content producer. She specialises in the use of physical demonstrations to explain seemingly complex scientific phenomena. In 2022 Fran’s first maker-focused children’s book was released for Walker Books, with a second already commissioned. Fran has contributed to more than 10 children’s science books (Horrible Science: Evil Inventions, How Things Work Encyclopaedia, Stuff that Scares Your Pants Off). She has also been a regular columnist for National Geographic Kids, The Week Junior and Science & Nature magazine. Fran is a Trustee of the Brunel Museum, a member of the Engineering and Technology Innovation Awards Advisory Board, and for many years served on the Institute of Physics’ Girls in Physics Advisory Group.