Wednesday 16 May 2012

Introducing: Richard France, our new Centre Development Manager


Richard France
I started on 1st April 2012 in the role of Centre Development Manager at the new Centre forAssistive Technology and Digital Healthcare. The RAT blog has previously given an overview of the new Centre, which has received an investment of £1.3M from the Vice Chancellor’s Strategic Development Fund.

My background cuts across research, commercialisation and knowledge exchange, predominantly at the life science – engineering interface. I obtained my degree and PhD at Sheffield in materials science and then spent over 10 years as a researcher in the area of biomaterials and tissue engineering. This included time as an academic researcher before moving into industry, working for a spinout company on the development of new scaffold systems for tissue repair and novel in-vitro assays for drug testing.

In 2007, I moved back to the University of Sheffield to work in knowledge exchange, first setting up and managing the N8 METRC Centre and then managing the University’s EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Account.

My role as Centre Development Manager involves managing day-to-day activities for the Centre. Initially this includes coordinating the recruitment of new academic staff, meeting with the 30+ Centre members to understand their research interests and working up a business case for the ‘Living Lab’ – a real world home environment for the evaluation of new technologies.

[written by Richard France]






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