Chief engineer and founder of Riversimple, Hugo Spowers is also a recognised thought leader on the Circular Economy, as architect for the business model, technology and governance of Riversimple. Hugo graduated from Oxford with an Engineering degree and has an MBA from Cranfield University. Hugo is responsible for all technical aspects of the cars and for the architecture of the business itself.

Hugo has been asked to speak on the Circular Economy numerous times–e.g. at the Cambridge Centre for Industrial Sustainability in 2015; the CE100 meeting in Milan in 2016; a UNIDO conference on the Circular Economy in the automotive industry on Bratislava 2017; he delivered a keynote speech at the EIB/ECB on creating a circular value network at their annual conference; and he was invited to speak at the launch of the Circular Cars Initiative at Davos 2020 by the World Economic Forum.

Hugo will be providing strategic support and thought leadership for the business outreach activities as well as strategic support and operational guidance for the Pilot Projects.

Fiona Spowers is Riversimple’s communications director and has over 30 years’ experience in the advertising business. Having worked for agencies in London and Paris, she went to become head of strategic planning across Europe for 9 years and globally for another 10 years for TBWA, one of the top global advertising agencies. Fiona is the Project’s Senior Responsible Officer.

Charlotte Evans has a technical based background and has joined Riversimple to assist with Circular Revolution and to project manage the blockchain PlotProjects.She has extensive experience managing large projects covering many disciplines and different time scales in a compliance-based environment.

Roland Whitehead has had a design-led career working on physical and digital products and services. He has been involved in environmental projects since college days and spent 7 years helping extend products’ lives as a director of one of the major auction houses. He was founder and CEO of the UK’s leading enterprise open source solutions business working on anything from micro-services to solutions for international clearing banks. Roland is the technical coordinator for the all of the Pilot Projects.

Prof. Arnold Beckmann is co-leading Swansea University’s Computational Foundry flagship project, which aims at interdisciplinary research centred around core Swansea Computer Science expertise including Human-Computer-Interaction, DataScience, Cyber Security and Fundamentals of Computing, to create a beacon for computing in Wales and beyond. Arnold has been a recipient of Leopoldina and Marie-Curie academic fellowships, his research has been funded by EPSRC, the Royal Society, the German DFG and the Austrian FWF. He has made notable contributions in fundamentals of Computer Science. Arnold e is founding member of Swansea Blockchain Lab, and involved in several projects that explore the research foundations of blockchain technology. Arnold is the academic leadforthe blockchain spine design Pilot Project providing specialist blockchain strategic support & operational guidance.

Dr Matt Roach is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Swansea University. Matt’srRole in the Circular Revolution project it’s to support the work packages 6-8 on Blockchain innovation, Governance, Design & Build and Integration. Matt has experience as an investigator on £1.5m Innovate UK funded projects, applying machine learning to the challenges of smart city traffic management and fraud detection. Matt has extensive experience in securing collaborative research and Innovation funding, and leading business engagement activities: on the £31MComputational Foundry and the £1.2M EPSRC Data Release: Trust, Identity, Privacy and Security projects. His research interests are multidisciplinary and focus on the intersection of people and data, themes include: Machine Learning; Algorithmic Bias,Fairness; Pervasive & Persuasive Computing; Human Computer/Data Interaction;Participatory Design; Socio-Technical Decision-Making Systems; Socio-Technical Behaviour Change Systems. Matt’s main work is in the domains of Health &Well being, Smart Cities, Digital Economy. He has leadership roles in doctoral training initiatives: convening the Wales ESRC Wales Doctoral Training Partnership Digital Economy Pathway and retaining management role on of the £11m EPSRC Centre forDoctoral Training in Enhancing Human interactions and Collaborations with Data and Intelligence Driven Systems. Matt is a Member of the ACM. Prior to becoming a full time academic, Matt completed a management role in a knowledge exchange project, up-skilling 350 software professionals and 2900 business owners in computing skills, resulting in £40m uplift in national GVA. He also worked for a decade in industry as a Founder, Director and CEO of software development companies.