Professor Gavin Bunting is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director for Innovation and Engagement in the College of Engineering, Swansea University. Gavin teaches Circular Economy, life cycle analysis, environmental legislation and sustainability at masters and doctoral level, drawing on his experiences working with government on sustainability and climate change issues. Gavin chairs the pan Wales Circular Economy Research and Innovation Group (CERIG) which has membership from all universities in Wales, Welsh Government and WRAP. The group connects complementary expertise and experiences to facilitate Circular Economy innovation and research in Wales and provides evidence to help inform Government policy and programmes. Gavin is the academic lead for the business outreach activities providing specialist Circular Economy strategic support & operational guidance. He highlights that with businesses increasingly aware of the need to embed sustainability at the heart of organisations, Circular Revolution provides an excellent opportunity to connect Welsh industry to the expertise in our universities, creating new opportunities and enabling Wales to be at the forefront of Circular Economy.

Max Green is a Circular Economy Research and Innovation Fellow at Swansea University. Part of the Circular Revolution business outreach team, he works to engage with businesses in West Wales and the Valleys and assist them in practically embedding circularity within their own products/services, processes and business models. Originally a Chemical and Bioprocess Engineering graduate from Swansea University, Max read for a MSc in Process Business Management at Warwick University where he was subsequently awarded the Chancellor’s International Scholarship for doctoral research. During this time, he investigated the use of performance-contracting mechanisms to increase market uptake of stationary hydrogen fuel cells, published internationally on the topic of servitization, and worked with Innovate UK to develop a tool which allows companies to explore their potential for business model innovation.

Divine Mathew is a second-year Chemical Engineering Student at Swansea University, presently undertaking a year in industry as the Circular Economy Placement Student. Divine specialises in analytical thinking, complex problem solving and project management. Divine works with the Research and Engagement Team with businesses in West Wales and the Valleys to help raise awareness in Circular Economy and support Circular applications in their organisations.

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.

Dr Stefano Barazza leads the Legal Innovation Lab Wales at Swansea University, a unique ERDF-funded initiative to promote applied research in legal technology, and is an experienced researcher focusing on the intersections of intellectual property,technology and competition. He has previously led postgraduate training for the UK Intellectual Property Office and is a co-editor of the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice (OUP). He has published extensively in the areas of patent law,standard technology, secondary innovation and competition. His current research,funded by Horizon 2020, focuses on the use of smart contracts, in a blockchain context, to license IP assets. His contribution to the Circular Revolution project aimsto explore the use of smart contracts to support the open innovation model that is atthe core of the project. As Director of the LLM Legal Tech at the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Stefano is also keen to inspire younger generations to embrace the transformative potential of technology in the legal field–a potential that the Circular Revolution project fully embraces and realises.

Spyridonas Georgiou is a research assistant within the Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law at Swansea University focusing on the applications of legal technology and especially on the use of smart contracts in a blockchain context. He has previously worked on a project where he conducted innovative research around the legal requirements surrounding the development and operation of a blockchain platform which uses smart contracts to conclude licensing transactions. He holds a postgraduate degree in Legal Tech where he specialised on how technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain impact legal services, explored the legal and regulatory challenges associated with emerging technologies and gained expertise on digital intellectual property, computational thinking, and legal tech entrepreneurship. He has both a mathematical and legal educational background, so he has researched around the legal status of blockchain-based smart contracts from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. His role at the Circular Revolution project is to research into open innovation models within a circular economy context and to contribute to on-going research into the use of smart contracts and blockchain technologies to enable collaboration between commercial partners to maximise the opportunities afforded by a circular economy relationship.