Meet our Knowledge Transfer Manager for Industrial Technologies

The Innovate UK KTN Meet the Industrial Technology & Manufacturing Team article series is an opportunity to find out more about the specialists within the team and how they can help you find funding competitions as well as support you in developing your technology and organisation’s capabilities.

This month, Simon Yarwood, Knowledge Transfer Manager for Industrial Technologies at Innovate UK KTN, shares what his work involves.

What is your role at Innovate UK KTN?

“Knowledge Transfer Manager for Industrial Technologies.”

What does your job role involve?

“My job as a KTM is to help bring about positive change through helping innovative ideas come to life. That can largely be summarised as PPP – people, products and pounds. I help innovators connect to the people they need to grow their idea, make the connections to get the missing part of the jigsaw with products and help them identify and apply for funding.

“Day to day I am the contact for the computing and software community, including high performance computing (HPC) and a focus on energy efficiency. I’m also linked in the system level energy harvesting community in the UK and looking for ways to self power the ever growing need for remote sensing and telemetry.”

What does a typical day/week look like at KTN?

“One of the reasons I enjoy working at KTN is there is no typical day or week, there’s always something new to discover and engage with. But things I regularly do are engage with innovators from across sectors and identify where enabling industrial technology can help them, or where they can help it!”

What’s your biggest priority at the moment?

“I’m currently fully immersed with colleagues in supporting Innovate UK in a 2-stage funding call to tackle complex measurement challenges to increase UK productivity. After 6 years it still has ways to keep you on your toes at its peak.”

What upcoming technology advancements/innovations are you excited about in your sector/industry/area of work?

“I am very excited about the future focus on UK manufacturing and the opportunities available with digitalisation, net zero solutions, resilient supply chains, levelling up, future skills and industrial strategy.”

Tell us about something exciting you’re working on?

“Something that I enjoy and takes up a lot of my time at points in the year is the A4I funding programme. It’s exciting as it delivers real benefits to businesses, it helps them solve an issue they’ve not been able to resolve, which has a very immediate positive effect on their business. We can trace increased turnover, rise in employment and overseas expansion to the help this programme gives. It wouldn’t be able to operate without the work KTN does to move companies from Stage 1 to Stage 2 applications, so I get a great sense of achievement when a funding round closes. Colleagues are currently helping me schedule 240 meetings between applicants and parts of the publicly funded measurement services to discuss how to fix those challenges, a slog, but a great result at the end.”

What is your previous work experience?

“Before coming to work at the newly formed one KTN in 2014 I worked with the ICT and ESP [Electronics, Sensors and Photonics] KTNs in my role as Head of Sector at the Institution of Engineering and Technology. Whilst there we organised joint events and produced publications on ICT Engineering implementations and innovations. Before that I worked in a series of roles in the mobile network operator Orange, my last role being the creation, delivery and management of refurbished phone sale channels. Running an eBay shop is something I would not wish on even the vilest of foe!”

Contact us

Make sure to visit the manufacturing as well as industrial technology sections of the Innovate UK KTN website to find out more about how the team can support your business.