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Latest - Area of Interest: Tech for good

Professor Peter Dobson OBE

Prof Peter Dobson OBE was born during WWII in Liskeard,  Cornwall and led a “net zero carbon existence” for his first 14 years without mains electricity or water. 

After Grammar school, he chose a GPO (General Post Office, now BT) scholarship to take him to university and worked alongside Tommy Flowers.  His broad career has covered a wide range of disciplines from physics and chemistry to materials science and engineering and bridged industry (Philips) and academia (Imperial College and Oxford).  Peter was responsible for creating and building The Begbroke Science Park for Oxford University.

Peter has successfully spun-off numerous companies. His latest, Oxford NanoSystems was formed in 2012. He is currently on the advisory board of several companies involved in nano-materials, healthcare and energy. He was awarded the OBE in 2013 in recognition of his contributions to science and engineering.

Dr Hayaatun Sillem, CBE

Dr Hayaatun Sillem says the value of education and the self-coaching mindset her parents instilled in her as she grew up in west London has been a guiding principle all her life. The desire to make a positive contribution to society has been another key goal.

 Both are values she is pursuing at the Royal Academy of Engineering, where she has been Chief Executive since 2018, leading a team of some 140 staff, and overseeing a budget of more than £50m.

In 2019, the Financial Times named Dr Sillem the 4th most influential woman in UK engineering, and this year Computer Weekly ranked her the 7th most influential woman in tech.

But with a mixed race background, and parents of modest means, her proudest achievement is having stuck with an internal voice of doubt and a sense of differentness. She is a leading voice on diversity and inclusion in and beyond engineering, and co-chaired the Hamilton Commission on improving representation of black people in UK motorsport with Sir Lewis Hamilton.

There is a “massive diversity deficit in engineering,” she says “And this really matters because engineering and technology are everywhere in our lives. The people who develop deliver, maintain and upgrade the products and services we all rely on every day are currently way too unrepresentative of the society they serve. And that is not good for us as a profession.” It is a balance she is striving to redress.

Michael van de Weg

MedTech pioneer Michael van de Weg was born in southern Africa and worked with IT majors before he teamed up with a friend in 2015 to form IMMJ in London to develop and sell an electronic document solution for healthcare.

Michael graduated from University of KwaZulu-Natal and joined IBM, where he was soon propelled into a project to recall and fix 10,000 smart card devices for a bank. He was offered an IBM career path but was inclined by his father’s experience and advice to become an entrepreneur.

Sir Michael Brady

Sir Michael Brady is Emeritus Professor of Oncological Imaging at the University of Oxford, having retired in 2010 as Professor of Information Engineering.  He is co-Director of the Oxford Cancer Imaging Centre.  He is distinguished for his work in artificial intelligence, and for his outstanding contributions to developing computer-based post-processing for a variety of medical images.  He combines his work in oncology with a range of entrepreneurial activities.  He was Deputy Chairman of Oxford Instruments, and also a founder of successful start-ups such as Guidance, Mirada Medical, Optellum, Perspectum Diagnostics, ScreenPoint Medical, and Volpara Solutions among others.  Sir Michael was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineers, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and Fellow of the American Association of Artificial Intelligence, and also he is Membre Étranger de l’Académie des Sciences.  In addition to this numerous academic fellowships and prizes he received a knighthood in 2004 for services to engineering.