John Haine has spent his career in the electronics and communications industry, working for large corporations and with four Cambridge start-ups. His technical background includes R&D in radio circuitry and microwave circuit theory; and the design of novel radio systems for cordless telephony, mobile data, fixed wireless access and IoT communications. He has led standardisation activities in mobile data and FWA in ETSI, and contributed to WiMax in IEEE. At various times he has been involved in and led fund-raising and M&A activities. In 1999 he joined TTP Communications working on research, technology strategy and M&A; and after the company’s acquisition by Motorola became Director of Technology Strategy in Motorola Mobile Devices. After leaving Motorola he was CTO Enterprise Systems with ip.access, a manufacturer of GSM picocells and 3G femtocells. In early 2010 he joined Cognovo, which was acquired by u-blox AG in 2012. He led u-blox' involvement in 3GPP NB-IoT standardisation and the company's initial development of the first modules for trials and demonstrations. Now retired from u-blox he is an Honorary Professor in Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Bristol University, where he chairs the SWAN Prosperity Partnership Project external advisory board . He was founder chair and is Board Member Emeritus of the IoT Security Foundation. He served on the CW Board chaired the Editorial Board of the CW Journal. John has a first degree from Birmingham (1971) and a PhD from Leeds (1977) universities, and is a Life Member of the IEEE.
Leo’s award-winning research on signal cancellation technology forms the basis of Forefront RF’s product development. He was previously a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, and has worked in the wireless industry on mobile chipset development. He has a Ph.D in wireless communication, has published in top academic and industry journals, and is named inventor on several patents.
Tony Milbourn
- Corporate Strategy, u-blox UK
Tony has 30 years’ experience in the mobile communications industry and a PhD in control theory. Following a career at PA Technology and then as one of the founders of TTP, in 2000 he led the spin-out and flotation of TTP Communications plc, a major licensing business in cellular that was acquired in 2006 by Motorola. He was also a founder of ip.access, the femtocell business, and more recently led the spin-out of a soft modem start-up, Cognovo, from ARM Holdings. Cognovo was acquired by u-blox AG in 2012. u-blox is a $400m Swiss supplier of location and communications modules and chips that is focused on industrial, automotive and professional applications, particularly in the Internet of Things. For 5 years Tony drove the strategic expansion of u-blox and enabled a number of acquisitions that extended the scope and direction of the company. He is interested in creating new opportunities at the point where communications and computing converge.
Robert Mullins
- Professor in Computer Architecture, University of Cambridge
I am a Professor in Computer Architecture at the Department of Computer Science and Technology. My current research is focused in the area of efficient and secure machine learning, accelerator and microprocessor design, and open-source hardware. I am a founder and director of lowRISC. lowRISC is a not-for-profit company using collaborative engineering to develop and maintain open-source silicon designs and tools. lowRISC stewards the OpenTitan project. I am also a director of zeroRISC. I was also a founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK charity that promotes the study of computer science and electronics at the school level. I am a Fellow of St. John's College and Director of Studies for Computer Science at St. John's College and Peterhouse College.
Pietro Valdastri is Full Professor and Chair in Robotics and Autonomous Systems at the University of Leeds. He directs the Science and Technologies Of Robotics in Medicine (STORM) Lab, focusing on intelligent robots to fight cancer, the Institute of Robotics, Autonomous System and Sensing (IRASS), and the Robotics at Leeds network. He received his Laurea degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pisa in 2001 and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in 2006. After the PhD, he became Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at the BioRobotics Institute of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. In 2011, Prof Valdastri moved to Vanderbilt University as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering until 2016, when he relocated to Leeds.He has published more than 150 peer reviewed journal papers in the field of medical robotics and has been principal investigator on grants in excess of $24M supported by NSF, NIH, ERC, EU-H2020, Cancer Research UK, The Royal Society, EPSRC, Innovate UK and industry, including the NSF CAREER Award with the proposal “Lifesaving Capsule Robots” in 2015, the ERC Consolidator Grant Award with the proposal “NoLiMiTs – Novel Lifesaving Magnetic Tentacles” in 2019, and the KUKA Innovation Award for his robotic colonoscopy platform in 2019. Prof. Valdastri is a Royal Society Wolfson Research Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Editor for Medical and Rehabilitation Robotics of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, and a member of the steering committee of the International Society for Medical Innovation and Technology (iSMIT). STORM Lab’s research has been featured by several news outlets, including the BBC, The Times, The Washington Post, The Financial Times, New Scientist, The Spectator, WIRED, IEEE Spectrum, Medgadget, Daily Mail, The Engineer, Ingenia Magazine, Medical Design Technology Magazine, Medical Xpress, Newswise, NSF Science Now. Prof Valdastri also completed a successful entrepreneurial cycle with WinMedical s.r.l., a company he co-founded in 2009 and that was acquired by a larger enterprise in 2017. He recently started a new company, Atlas Endoscopy Limited, to bring his robotic colonoscopy platform to patients.
