- Gary Atkinson, Director Embedded Marketing, ARM Holdings plc
Gary is based in Cambridge, UK, but spends his time traveling the world talking to people who already have or may have a use for embedded or deeply embedded ARM-based processors. Areas that use lots of embedded processors or microcontrollers are the Automotive, Smart Energy, Medical and Industrial Automation industries. He is particularly interested in how the mass deployment of low cost and low power sensors can provide the real-time data needed to improve production or energy efficiency, or automate how one machine talks to another.
- Fiona Saunders, Head of Commercialisation, Technology & Innovation, Connected Homes, British Gas
Fiona heads up technology commercialisation within the Technology & Innovation team at British Gas. Before taking this role, Fiona had been working closely with British Gas on various connected home propositions, including the award winning Remote Heating Control, as Client Services Director at AlertMe.
Fiona has been passionate about the energy market and technology for many years, and other experiences includes working with utilities at Bain & Company, a secondment to the Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC), venture capital at the Carbon Trust, and technology development at BMW and Dyson.
Fiona will speak about how the energy industry is facing great change and has to do it while managing competing pressures: minimising carbon emissions, securing energy supply and keeping bills low for consumers. The government has put in place a number of policies to help achieve these goals, including mandating that UK utilities roll out smart meters by the end of the decade and obliging energy suppliers to deliver energy efficient solutions to households. Alongside government policy drivers, emerging technological solutions are offering us new ways to generate and use energy, offering consumers increased comfort and control. Many of the people in this room know this already – what are we doing about it?
- Fiona Harvey, tbc, Environmental Correspondent, The Guardian Newspaper
Fiona Harvey is an award-winning environment journalist for the Guardian. Prior to this, she worked for the Financial Times for more than a decade. She has reported on every major environmental issue, from as far afield as the Arctic and the Amazon, and her wide range of interviewees include Ban Ki-moon and Jeff Immelt.
- Pilgrim Beart, AlertMe Founder Director
Pilgrim Beart is a serial entrepreneur with longstanding interests in several topics highly relevant to the Internet of Things, including short-range Wireless, Power-scavenging and Emergence. Living in both Silicon Valley, California and Cambridge, UK, Pilgrim has played major roles in creating 4 companies: ActiveRF (an early player in active real-time location), Antenova (which has shipped >40m antennas in mobile devices), Splashpower (wireless power transfer to mobile devices) and AlertMe (a leader in deploying ZigBee networks in the home). He is a named inventor on more than 40 granted patents worldwide in areas as diverse as antenna systems, emergent security systems and wireless power transfer. Pilgrim has now helped steer his latest venture, AlertMe into the top 10 fastest growing SMEs in the UK as of 2012.
- Graham Ford, Managing Director, Mansion Partners - Chairman
Graham is a former iHEAT Conference moderator. He is an experienced mechanical engineer, product developer and entrepreneur. Graham's main focus is energy, and energy related developments in transport, building and electricity generation and energy efficiency. A seasoned cleanpower entrepreneur, Graham founded and was CTO of Heliodynamics, a CSP company, and has worked at top tier consultancy, as PA Consulting, and an MA from Cambridge in Engineering.
- Neil Witney, Senior Policy Advisor, Heat and Industry, DECC
Neil is a senior policy adviser in the Department of Energy and Climate Change. In the last three years, he designed and delivered the Boiler Scrappage and Renewable Heat Premium Payment schemes, which incentivised and monitored home heating technologies. Previously he has advised on sustainable development strategy, neighbourhood, urban and rural regeneration. Neil is involved in the Renewable Energy Strategy Consultation in the UK. His talk is entitled: The Heat Strategic Framework to 2050 and the role of innovation. The talk will cover requirements for space heating and hot water in buildings which are major contributors to UK energy demand and associated carbon emissions. The Government’s Heat Strategy sets out a framework for reducing carbon emissions in the UK by 2050. Innovation underpins current UK Government sponsored research on demand modelling, storage, controls and metering.
- Dr Jeff Hardy, Senior Manager, Ofgem
Dr Jeff Hardy is Senior Manager, Sustainable Development at Ofgem. Previously he has worked as the Knowledge Exchange Manager at the UK Energy Research Centre, the Environment and Energy Policy Manager at the Royal Society of Chemistry, a Green Chemistry academic and a research chemist in a nuclear laboratory.
In meeting renewable energy and carbon targets, the UK energy system will undergo a transition. For domestic heat, this could mean a shift from gas to new technologies such as heat pumps and heat networks. The regulatory challenges inherent in this transition will be the focus of this presentation.
- Dr Laura Haynes, Cabinet Office Behavioural Insights Team
Dr Laura Haynes is Head of Policy Research at the Behavioural Insights Team in the UK Cabinet Office. She is responsible for the development of randomised controlled trials in a range of policy areas to identify cost-effective policy solutions grounded in behavioural science. Since receiving the University Medal at University of New South Wales for her undergraduate studies in psychology, Laura has completed a PhD in Experimental Psychology at the University of Cambridge and is now Visiting Researcher at King’s College London. Laura’s experience in the public sector includes a research fellowship in behavioural economics at the National Audit Office, where she developed a framework for assessing value for money when government seeks to influence citizen behaviour.
Laura has overseen a new survey on energy-saving among consumers for the government and will discuss this in her talk at iHEAT 2012.
- Ian Rose, Director, Passivsystems
Ian Rose will discuss the PassivEnergy product and how it enables homes smartly to be automated for heating. The technology combines patent-pending learning algorithms based on building efficiency, occupancy patterns and weather data with one-touch control. The array of conference speaker topics makes this talk very powerful in the setting. Ian is a business development professional with over 15 years experience in the utilities sector delivering technology and service sales, bids, project management and consulting.
He is currently helping PassivSystems to lead the charge in making the built environment the focus of attention for delivering energy savings and utility business transformation. He has been a director at bGlobal, Electralink and Logica.
- Cormac McHugh, Galu
Cormac is a Founder Director at Galu Ltd, which is a new company that manufactures and sells high end accumulator tanks or thermal stores from 300L to 12,000L in size to the UK market through distributorships. Cormac was founder and managing director at C-MC Energy in Ireland, which is part of the CMC Group which was founded in 1999. C-Mc Energy was established to meet the growing demand for reliable, high performance renewable energy heating systems.
The company grew organically and quickly became a leading wholesale supplier of renewable energy heating systems, representing some of the world’s most innovative manufacturers. C-Mc Energy is also involved in product design and R&D, with manufacturers across the globe, particularly in the areas of heat pump technology and water storage/distribution.
- Andrew Bissell, CEO, Sunamp
Andrew is the owner of Sunamp, a startup phase-change-materials energy storage company. Prior to this Andrew was CEO of Voxar Ltd. Andrew Bissell is a member of that elite band of technology entrepreneurs who founded a company in the 90s, survived the dot-com crash, the fallout from 9/11 and ultimately steered the company to a highly successful exit. Far from hanging up his 'spurs' he is now an active investor, working with several next generation companies all in the area of lowering carbon emissions and combating climate change. Andrew founded Voxar in 1990 with a view to developing a graphics accelerator card. However, within a couple of years he recognised that market was becoming overcrowded with little differentiation between the Voxar card and competitive products. He decided to change direction and concentrate on the development of a software based solution. Voxar became one of the world's leading companies in 3D medical visualisation. A key feature of his business strategy was to partner with established major players such as Agfa, Phillips and Siemens, as the route to building market share.
- Will Hopkins, Your Smart Home Ltd
A social entrepreneur and legal scholar, Will Hopkins is Managing Director of Your Smart Home. With offices in the North and South of the country, under Will’s leadership Your Smart Home has fast become one of the UK’s leading automation providers offering both consultancy, design and installation services across all sectors, alongside supporting a retail web shop. Will is a regular contributor to several industry magazines and has worked on a variety of automation projects including celebrity homes, commercial buildings and standard domestic dwellings. He is a Professional Member of the British Computer Society and a Certified KNX Partner.
- David Lewis, Marketing Director, Schneider Electric
David is a qualified engineer who subsequently also gained a Masters business degree and has worked at Schneider Electric since 1989. He has a broad knowledge base in electrical technology, marketing, commercial and manufacturing management, having started out working on HV applications and design. David is responsible for the marketing of the company’s energy efficiency offer. David has a daughter and can be found supporting his local speedway team or relaxing with watercolours.
- Aref Taidi, Technical Director, New Era Controls
- Russell Haggar, VP Business Development & Co-founder, Xsilon Ltd
Intelligent in-building environmental control and monitoring needs a method for connecting sensors, devices and appliances that meets the offering’s overall goals. Connectivity that works for large scale rollouts at appliance-level price points is challenging and requires more than mere off-the-shelf thinking. We call this concept “In-Home M2M”.
Russell Haggar is VP, Business Development and a co-founder at Xsilon. He has spent 25 years in the comms technology industry, acting variously as an engineer, marketeer, investor and consultant with companies such as Marconi, Madge Networks, Sagentia, Element 14 (Broadcom, not Farnell), DFJ Esprit, XMOS, SiConnect and Enlightened Technology. Our Hanadu technology for In-Home M2M is targeted directly at the topics on the agenda at iHEAT – we are looking forward to the day.
