Professor Jill MacBryde has been named co-director of the Made Smarter Network. Jill, alongside Jan Godsell from the University of Warwick, has taken on the role of co-director of the research and network strand of the £147million Made Smarter Innovation programme. They will be working within the Economic and Social Research Council.
They will work alongside the challenge director and programme team for an initial five-month period with the aim of creating a wider community of stakeholders and research into a Made Smarter Network Plus.
The Network Plus aims to bring together economic and social science insights across the challenge and the wider UK manufacturing sector. It will provide academic leadership and activities to bolster engagement and collaboration opportunities for digital technology innovation within manufacturing.
Chris Courtney, Challenge Director for Made Smarter Innovation, said, “Digital technologies have the power to radically transform how we manufacture and deliver the products and services of the future and deliver a more resilient, prosperous economy with fundamental changes to the nature of work. A key part of delivering an optimal future in manufacturing will be enabled by harnessing the insights from the broader economic, social, regulatory and political sciences.
“I’m delighted to welcome Jan and Jill to the overall effort as co-directors, combining two of our leading academics in this space bringing leadership, insight of with a passion for manufacturing. I’m excited to get this work underway and to support Jill and Jan as they reach out to the broad network of capability to engage and shape a vital and exciting programme of work.”
As part of her ‘call to arms’ for more diversity in manufacturing Jill has written a blog on just that topic and you can read it here: https://www.sbs.strath.ac.uk/blogs/SBS/post.aspx?id=1442#post