Why Innovation Matters

Duration: 2 mins
Publication date: 14 Jun 2021

Abstract

We asked our E&T Advisory Board why the Innovation Awards are so important. Here’s what they told us. Featuring Charles Adler, Danielle George, Sven Scimpf, Fran Scott and Professor Kevin Warwick.

Keywords:: 2020 E&T Innovation Awards

Savoy Place

innovation

radical thinkers

trailblazers

Channels

IET News

Speakers

Professor Danielle George

“As engineers and technicians, I think we all have a duty to talk about our passions to inspire the next generation.”Danielle George is Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University of Manchester and a science communicator. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors.She has worked with NASA and ESA on the development of instrumentation for researchers exploring the Big Bang. Her most recent work on broadband amplifier design at 116GHz is state-of-the-art and pushing the very limits of semiconductor technology.“For as long as I can remember I was always interested in science – from playing with my chemistry set as a child to studying things under a microscope. My passion soon branched out into astronomy after watching an eclipse with my family.”An ambassador for STEM, she gave the 2014 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, co-founded and developed the Manchester Robot Orchestra as a citizen science initiative, has given TED and TEDx talks, and was awarded the MBE in 2016.“For me, it’s not just the legacy aspect, it’s about telling the stories of the incredible difference makers around the world who want to get involved and inspiring the next generation into solving engineering challenges.”
Fran Scott

You may know Fran from her fiery demonstrations on CBBC’s Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom, or more recently as the Engineering judge on Channel 4’s Lego Masters or perhaps as an expert on Abandoned Engineering.Either way, as well as being a well-known face when it comes to Science demonstrations on television, Fran is also a pyrotechnician and Science Content Producer at the Royal Institution.A neuroscientist by education but an engineer at heart, Fran uses her knowledge to entertain and excite audiences of stage and screen, using high impact demonstrations to prove her scientific point.Inspired by the lack of female scientist role models on Children’s TV, 13 years ago Fran set about to change that and after working behind-the-scenes for several years Fran made the move to in-front of camera in 2012. She has since presented 8 series for CBBC, 6 series for BBC Learning and 1 for BBC Worldwide, with her shows receiving numerous recognitions including four BAFTA nominations, a JAPAN prize nomination and an RTS award. She is best known for her playful (and often fiery) demonstrations on Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom (CBBC).Now, as Fran (and her audiences) are aging, she’s made the move into more adult-focused programming and is allowing her love of engineering to take centre stage. Recently she has fronted The Department of Complaints (More4), shown her analytical side as the Engineering judge on Series 2 of Lego Masters (Channel4), and has been an engineering expert on Engineering Catastrophes (Discovery), How Hacks Work (Viasat Explore) and Abandoned Engineering (Yesterday).With the draw of science and engineering being Fran’s main aim, it makes sense that she also approaches her audiences from the stage. Running her own stage production company (Great Scott! Productions) she writes and produces high octane shows for clients such as Google, Siemens and National Grid. Also her work as the Science Content Producer at the Royal Institution sees her heading up the demonstration team for their world famous Christmas Lectures.In addition Fran also writes content for print and is a columnist for both The Week Junior and National Geographic Kids, as well as a contributor to Huffington Post.
Charles Adler

My name is Charles Adler. For much of my life I've been a designer and technologist tinkering with code directed toward accelerating the creative work of others.In 2009 I launched Kickstarter with Perry Chen & Yancey Strickler. Since that time, Kickstarter has been catalyst to Academy Award winning films, National Design Award winning products, brought art to the desert, launched a satellite – creating over 300,000 jobs, distributing over $4.5 billion to creators across every continent. By now you've likely participated in a Kickstarter campaign as a backer, and maybe even launched your own. It's become the largest platform for creative projects globally. That's pretty rad, and frankly, humbling.After leaving Kickstarter at the end of 2013, I began exploring new ways to empower independent creators.Lost Arts was born in the summer of 2015 as a one-month experiment. A new format of workspace for ambitious creators in the 21st century. What began in a 4,000 square foot abandoned meat packing plant has grown into a 25,000 square foot space on Chicago's Goose Island. We've incubated urban agriculture products powered by AI, interactive public art installations, ovens producing amazing breads, and myriad other ideas. This project has now found a new medium – the internet. It's a circuitous story, and one best told over a cocktail or a long hike in the woods.
Dr Sven Schimpf

Dr.-Ing. Sven Schimpf has been working as an interdisciplinary researcher and innovator at the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft since 2002.In addition to his business administration degree, he completed his doctorate in engineering during his work in CC R&D Management at Fraunhofer IAO.He has been involved in numerous national and international research and consulting projects to help industrial companies from various industries improve their R&D strategies, processes and organization. His work focuses on strategic R&D and innovation management, in particular the observation, evaluation and integration of potentially disruptive developments.Since 2017, Sven Schimpf has been Managing Director of the Fraunhofer Group for Innovation Research.
Professor Kevin Warwick

HandChipKevin Warwick is Emeritus Professor at Coventry and Reading Universities. Prior to that he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Coventry University. His research areas are artificial intelligence, control, robotics and biomedical engineering. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng.) and is a Fellow of The Institution of Engineering & Technology (FIET). He is the youngest person ever to become a Fellow of the City & Guilds of London Institute (FCGI). He is the author or co-author of more than 600 research papers and has written or edited 27 books (three for general readership), as well as numerous magazine and newspaper articles on scientific and general subjects. He has broadcast and lectured widely and holds various visiting professorships.Kevin was born in Coventry and left school to join British Telecom, at the age of 16. At 22 he took his first degree at Aston University, followed by a PhD and a research post at Imperial College, London. He subsequently held positions at Oxford, Newcastle, Warwick and Reading universities before being offered the DVC post at Coventry.He has been awarded higher doctorates (DScs) by Imperial College and the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague on different scientific areas. He was presented with The Future of Health Technology Award at MIT (USA), was made an Honorary Member of the Academy of Sciences, St.Petersburg, was awarded the IEE Senior Achievement Medal in 2004, the Mountbatten Medal in 2008, the Ellison-Cliffe Medal in 2011 from the Royal Society of Medicine and in 2014 was elected as a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2000 Kevin presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, entitled “The Rise of The Robots”. He has also been awarded Honorary DSc Degrees by the Universities of Aston, Coventry, Bradford, Bedfordshire, Portsmouth and Kingston and an Honorary DTech Degree by Robert Gordon University.Kevin instigated a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device (Utah Array/BrainGate) into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled. The development of the implant technology was carried out by a team of researchers headed by Dr Mark Gasson who, along with Kevin, used it to perform the ground-breaking research. Kevin was successful with the first extra-sensory (ultrasonic) input for a human and with the first purely electronic communication experiment between the nervous systems of two humans. His research has been discussed by the US White House Presidential Council on BioEthics, The European Commission and led to him being widely referenced and featured in academic circles as well as appearing as cover stories in several magazines – e.g. Wired (USA), The Week (India).The Institute of Physics selected Kevin as one of only 7 eminent scientists to illustrate the ethical impact their scientific work can have: the others being Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Nobel, Oppenheimer and Rotblat.His work is used as material in several advanced Level Physics courses in the UK and in many University courses including Harvard, Stanford, MIT & Tokyo. His implants are on display in the Science Museums in London and Naples. As a result, Kevin regularly gives invited Keynote presentations.Kevin’s research has involved robotics and he was responsible (with Dr Jim Wyatt) for Cybot, a robot exported around the world as part of a magazine “Real Robots” – this resulted in royalties totalling over £1M for Reading University. Robots designed and constructed by Kevin’s group (Dr Ian Kelly, Dr Ben Hutt) were on permanent interactive display in the Science Museums in London, Birmingham and Linz.Some of Kevin’s recent research involves a collaborative project with the Oxford neurosurgeon, Prof. Tipu Aziz, using intelligent computer methods to predict the onset of Parkinsonian tremors such that they can be stopped by means of a deep brain implant. This work was hailed in the Mail on Sunday as “the most significant recent advance in biomedical engineering”.He also led an EPSRC sponsored project in which a cultured neural network (using biological neurons) was trained to control a mobile robot platform. This work, which was reported on in a New Scientist feature article, is now being used as an exercise for high school science studies in the UK. A Youtube video of this research has been downloaded/viewed 1.9 million times.
Professor Danielle George

“As engineers and technicians, I think we all have a duty to talk about our passions to inspire the next generation.”Danielle George is Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University of Manchester and a science communicator. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors.She has worked with NASA and ESA on the development of instrumentation for researchers exploring the Big Bang. Her most recent work on broadband amplifier design at 116GHz is state-of-the-art and pushing the very limits of semiconductor technology.“For as long as I can remember I was always interested in science – from playing with my chemistry set as a child to studying things under a microscope. My passion soon branched out into astronomy after watching an eclipse with my family.”An ambassador for STEM, she gave the 2014 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, co-founded and developed the Manchester Robot Orchestra as a citizen science initiative, has given TED and TEDx talks, and was awarded the MBE in 2016.“For me, it’s not just the legacy aspect, it’s about telling the stories of the incredible difference makers around the world who want to get involved and inspiring the next generation into solving engineering challenges.”
Professor Danielle George

“As engineers and technicians, I think we all have a duty to talk about our passions to inspire the next generation.”Danielle George is Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University of Manchester and a science communicator. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors.She has worked with NASA and ESA on the development of instrumentation for researchers exploring the Big Bang. Her most recent work on broadband amplifier design at 116GHz is state-of-the-art and pushing the very limits of semiconductor technology.“For as long as I can remember I was always interested in science – from playing with my chemistry set as a child to studying things under a microscope. My passion soon branched out into astronomy after watching an eclipse with my family.”An ambassador for STEM, she gave the 2014 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, co-founded and developed the Manchester Robot Orchestra as a citizen science initiative, has given TED and TEDx talks, and was awarded the MBE in 2016.“For me, it’s not just the legacy aspect, it’s about telling the stories of the incredible difference makers around the world who want to get involved and inspiring the next generation into solving engineering challenges.”
Professor Danielle George

“As engineers and technicians, I think we all have a duty to talk about our passions to inspire the next generation.”Danielle George is Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the University of Manchester and a science communicator. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors.She has worked with NASA and ESA on the development of instrumentation for researchers exploring the Big Bang. Her most recent work on broadband amplifier design at 116GHz is state-of-the-art and pushing the very limits of semiconductor technology.“For as long as I can remember I was always interested in science – from playing with my chemistry set as a child to studying things under a microscope. My passion soon branched out into astronomy after watching an eclipse with my family.”An ambassador for STEM, she gave the 2014 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, co-founded and developed the Manchester Robot Orchestra as a citizen science initiative, has given TED and TEDx talks, and was awarded the MBE in 2016.“For me, it’s not just the legacy aspect, it’s about telling the stories of the incredible difference makers around the world who want to get involved and inspiring the next generation into solving engineering challenges.”

Abstract

Channels

Title