Prof. Roberto DeSimone
Roberto has 35+ years expertise in exploiting emerging technologies, especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Quantum Technologies (QT), for government and commercial clients. He has a PhD in machine learning (1989) and pursued AI/ML research at world-leading institutes in the UK and US. Since 2010, he has been working at BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, where he has been leading a team of maverick scientists, engineers and consultants that is exploiting these emerging technologies for disruptive business applications for government and commercial clients. He is also working part-time as an Entrepreneur in Residence for quantum engineering at Bristol University, funded by the Royal Society, and a visiting professor of quantum systems engineering at Loughborough University, having been a visiting professor for AI at the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham.
Prof. Michael Henshaw
Michael Henshaw is Professor of Systems Engineering; he is head of the Systems Division and leads the Engineering Systems of Systems (EsoS) Research Group. His research focuses on integration and management of complex socio-technical systems, with a particular emphasis on the challenges of through-life management of systems and capabilities.
The main research topics studied include modelling of Systems of Systems (SoS), Systems Lifecycles, Network Enabled Capability (NEC), management of knowledge for through-life management (TLM), cyber-security, pilot training, C2, and autonomous robotic systems. Within all these areas there is a strong emphasis on the challenges of interoperability between systems and the importance of including humans and organisations as part of the systems.
Professor Henshaw graduated in applied physics, and his early research focused on laser-plasma interactions, using computational fluid dynamics to investigate various phenomena in applications such as X-ray lasers. He joined British Aerospace (later BAE Systems) as an aerodynamicist and worked for seventeen years in aeronautical engineering tackling problems associated with unsteady aerodynamics (computational and experimental) and, later, multi-disciplinary integration. He was appointed to a chair in Systems Engineering at Loughborough in 2006 to direct the large (£4M) multi-university, multi-disciplinary programme sponsored by EPSRC and BAE Systems, NECTISE, that ran from Nov 2005 – April 2009. He has an international reputation for his work in systems of systems.
Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh
Dr. Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, is an Investment Director within the Technology Partnership. She takes an active role as a non-executive director in a number of software companies (machine learning, AI and robotics) and also leads the Quantum Computing portfolio at IP Group. She manages technology investments from deal origination to exit, having been responsible for the trade sale of TheySay Ltd (acquired by Aptean), secondary share sale exit in Concirrus as well as sourced and worked with the founding team to build Quantum Motion. She has also been the acting Chair of Boxarr and Quantum Motion, as well as partnering with Innovate UK to run the Investment Accelerator in Quantum Computing.
An engineer by background, Manjari has a PhD from the University of Oxford specialising in machine learning and mobile robotics, which she did on a Rhodes Scholarship. Immediately prior to her current role she worked at Oxford University in its Innovation department and, earlier to that, as a post-doctoral researcher in the Computer Science department. She also serves as a governor at her local primary school.
Evert Geurtsen
Ryan Potts
Ryan Potts, Ph.D. obtained his B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina and his Ph.D. in Cell and Molecular Biology from UT Southwestern in 2007. In 2008 he was awarded the Sara and Frank McKnight junior faculty position at UT Southwestern Medical Center. During this time his lab focused on answering a long-standing question in cancer biology regarding the cellular function of cancer-testis antigen (CTAs) proteins. In 2011 he was appointed Assistant Professor in the Departments of Physiology, Pharmacology, and Biochemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center. His lab’s work defined a function for the enigmatic MAGE gene family in protein regulation through ubiquitination. In 2016 his lab moved to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital where he was an Associate Member in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. There his lab continued to work on CTAs, with a focus on elucidating the biochemical, cellular, physiological and pathological functions of the MAGE gene family. In 2020 he moved to Amgen, Inc. in Thousand Oaks, California to build a new department called the Induced Proximity Platform (IPP) that is focused on drugging the “undruggable”.
Kristine McKinney
