Tony Lesowiec, Practice Leader, Pera Innovation Ltd

Tony Lesowiec is a Practice Leader within the UK Research Institutes at Pera , the part of the business who has helped over 100 UK companies in accessing over £200 million of funding in the last decade for new product development. His team has been involved in developing a range of cutting-edge technical and commercial solutions for clients covering a range of sectors including renewable energy, energy management, environmental technologies, electronics, materials, and sustainable manufacturing. Tony has been at Pera for over 15 years, progressing within the organisation from delivering and managing R&D projects, to his current role with full P&L responsibilities for his business. He has personally secured over of £5M of development funding for clients, and is one of Pera’s most successful fund raisers. Tony graduated with an Honours Degree in Applied Chemistry and, prior to joining Pera, Tony worked for 3M and Fuchs Lubricants.

Stuart Deed - Managing Director, The Launch-Point Limited

Stuart is founder and Managing Director of The Launch Point Limited. Launch Point provides hands-on support to early stage businesses in the clean, green, energy and environmental focused businesses. Prior to establishing this business, Stuart spent 15 years with SSE plc, in procurement, project development, mergers and acquisitions and venture capital. Stuart was a key figure in the creation of SSE Venture Capital (£120m under management) and has undertaken a number of non-executive roles in many of the investee businesses and has operated on the boards of a number of industrial associations.

Prior to SSE, Stuart spent ten years in exploration and production with Exxon Mobil working in Finance, Procurement & Contracting and Supply Chain. A graduate of Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Stuart has also professional chartered status in Procurement, Logistic & Transport, and Quality.

Dr Douglas Rankin - Associate, Marks & Clerk LLP

Douglas deals regularly with a broad spectrum of subject matter, but specialises in Intellectual Property for engineering technologies. He has significant experience working before the UK Intellectual Property Office and the European Patent Office, including Opposition and Appeal proceedings.

He advises blue chip companies and local SMEs, as well as start-up/spin-out companies, and has worked in Intellectual Property in both Europe and North America.

Douglas gained his doctorate in power engineering, after having worked in the semiconductor industry.

Professor C Paul Mitchell - University of Aberdeen, Institute of Energy Technologies

Prof Paul Mitchell has almost 30 years experience in conducting research, development and demonstration in renewable energies. He has worked closely with government departments and agencies, research institutes, international organisations and industry as programme and project manager developing biomass and bioenergy as an economically viable and sustainable source of energy. The development of wood either as co-products from the conventional forest industries or as short rotation coppice energy crops and more recently the development of biofuels has been a particular focus.

He teaches into the Energy Futures MSc programme and has supervised numerous PhD students on energy-related topics, in particular techno-economic and systems analysis of renewable energy technologies.

He is the author of over 200 scientific papers, editor of a book and 16 conference proceedings.

Professor Mitchell is the Chief Editor of the academic journal Biomass and Bioenergy published by Elsevier.

Professor Mitchell is based in the School of Engineering where he is Director of Institute of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering and leads the energy research programme. He is also Director of the Institute of Energy Technologies which brings together all the research in the University directed at energy related issues. Prime strengths are in renewables (biomass, biofuels, wave, fuel cells), Petroleum engineering, petroleum geology, storage of nuclear waste, economics & policy, supply system modelling, carbon sequestration, design of energy efficient buildings. He is a co-director of the Energy Technologies Partnership – a pan-Scotland partnership of university based researcher into all aspects of energy. He is also a founder Director of the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) and the Scottish European Green Energy Centre (SEGEC).