Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Beware The Techno-Fixes Draped In Sickly Green!

Background:

I think we all get it now: the days of our dependence on fossil fuels are numbered. But just how big is that number? Incumbent fossil fuel companies are massively powerful players in today’s global economy – and geo-politics – and they will stay dug in defending shareholder’s interests until they’re killed off by far better technological solutions to today’s energy, transport and manufacturing challenges.

Part of their die-in-a-ditch campaign is Predatory Delay: advocating fiercely for false solutions that keep the hydrocarbons-first business model ticking over for a little bit longer. Blue hydrogen is the classic predatory delay phenomenon. But what about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)? And Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in particular? Sorting out true green from faux-green is proving a big challenge for politicians today – especially those whose loyalties still lie in the world of fossil fuels.

Speaker:

Jonathon Porritt is an eminent writer and campaigner on sustainable development. For the last 30 years, Jonathon has provided strategic advice to leading UK and international companies to deepen their understanding of today’s converging environmental and climate crises. He is also focused on intergenerational justice, supporting young people in their activities around sustainable development issues as they face a future defined by the twin crises of the Climate Emergency and Biodiversity Emergency.

He is President of The Conservation Volunteers and is involved in the work of many other NGOs and groups. In 1996, he co-founded Forum for the Future, a leading international sustainable development charity, working with business and civil society to accelerate the shift toward a sustainable future. Jonathon was formerly Co-Chair of the Green Party (1980-83) and Director of Friends of the Earth (1984-90). He stood down as Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission in 2009, after nine years providing high-level advice to Government Ministers, and served a ten-year term as Chancellor of Keele University (2012-2022).

Jonathon was awarded a CBE in January 2000 for services to environmental protection. His latest book, Hope in Hell (Simon & Schuster, 2020, revised 2021) is a powerful ‘call to action’ on the Climate Emergency.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | The Future Of Building Foundations In The City: Energy Generating Assets

Background:

Modern multi-storey buildings in the City of London are usually supported on piled foundations; long columns of concrete that take the building loads into the ground. When sites are redeveloped each new building has tended to have a new set of deep foundations. This means that the ground is becoming very congested as foundations cannot be easily removed. The lecture will discuss the advantages of the new HIPER pile that minimises the use of concrete, can cool and heat the building and facilitates reuse when a new or modified building is constructed. The HIPER pile was developed with City, University of London which is closely connected to the City of London and was originally established with the backing of the Worshipful Company of Skinners when they first extended their involvement in education in the 1890s an interest which is continuing to expand today mainly with the support of school education.

Speaker:

Professor Sarah Stallebrass became a lecturer at City University in 1992 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1999 and to a Chair in Soil Mechanics in 2010. She was a member of the British Geotechnical Association Committee from 2004 becoming Chairman from 2009 until 2011. Sarah collaborates with colleagues on research including physical and numerical modelling of construction processes in geotechnical engineering. The current focus of this work is innovative sustainable deep foundations and the behaviour of working platforms. Her personal expertise is in the constitutive modelling and numerical analysis of soils especially stiff clays.

She is a Past Master of the Worshipful Company of Skinners’, where she is primarily involved in the Company’s educational activities. She has been a governor of Skinners School for Girls and Tonbridge School and chair of the Skinners’ Kent Academy Multi Academy Trust. She is currently vice chair of the new Skinners’ Academies Trust.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Will The Next Dick Whittington Please Step Forward? Harnessing Entrepreneurship In The City Of London To Help Build A World-Class, 21st Century Economy

Background:

The City has a long and profound history of an entrepreneurial mindset. It has innovation and invention in its DNA. Much of this has been driven by smart thinkers who are natural problem solvers, many of whom come from socially and educationally diverse backgrounds.

I’d like to explore the hypothesis that since the global crash and increased regulation, “risk” as a concept has been driven out of the City, replaced with a conservative, defensive, steady as we go mindset. In a nutshell, no place for the smart thinkers, who build things. Perhaps best encapsulated by the corporate mindset. They are trying to innovate, but honestly, they lack the entrepreneur’s ability.

As we now explore the benefits of a diverse and inclusive workforce, driving a new era of equity, so we have the opportunity to really bring these smart thinking, problem solvers from their diverse backgrounds to rediscover the secret sauce of enterprise and invention again. Harnessing it to create a new era of inclusivity and equity, really challenge the status quo and build a truly unique knowledge mile, where the only boundaries of the art of the possible are human creativity. Maybe we’ll even find a modern day Dick Whittington of legend…

Speaker:

Mark Huxley has worked within the globally iconic Lloyd’s insurance Market for nearly 50 years. He was originally a front-line practitioner at a Lloyd’s Underwriter for the first 20 years of his working life, leaving in the late 1990s to found his first company, which pioneered a new claims service solution for the industry. Growing the company to significant scale within a short timeframe, Mark exited and began what has become his primary focus for the last 20 years. He gained a reputation for his expertise in launching startups, scaling them, delivering operational organisation and helping create brands focused upon mission and cause. The intervening years seeing him help a vast number of clients become the best versions of themselves.

Ever the curious soul he has continued his own entrepreneurial journey founding a number of insurance related businesses, including an early insurtech provider, now a thriving motor insurance provider. More latterly he has become an occasional angel investor, is an active mentor, advisor and NED. He has actively supported the Lloyd’s Lab, innovation hub since its creation. Most recently Mark has taken on the Chairman’s role of Breathe Points, a startup focused upon building behavioural changes in city citizens, encouraging them to reduce their personal carbon impact. Very much the enterprise thinker therefore.

In 2017 Mark was elected a Freeman of the Company of Entrepreneurs, an aspirant Livery Company within the City of London. November 2023 sees him installed as its 10th Master. He is passionate about social inclusivity and equity and serves a number of charities, foundations and other organisations that strive to make the workplace fairer for underserved communities. He is also an occasional visiting lecturer on Entrepreneurial Mindset and Leadership.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Computational Medicine and Digital Twins Improving Medical Care

Background:

Novel medical technologies are being introduced at unprecedented rates, demanding scientific evidence of their safety and efficacy at an unprecedented pace to ensure patient safety and benefit. With success in both in-vitro/in-vivo studies, products are tested on clinical trials assessing use in humans. Predicting low-frequency side effects has been difficult because such side effects may not become apparent until many patients adopt the treatment. When medical devices fail at later stages, financial losses can be catastrophic. Testing on many people is costly, lengthy, and sometimes implausible (e.g., paediatric patients, rare diseases, and underrepresented or hard-to-reach ethnic groups).

Computational Medicine underpins In-silico trials (IST), i.e., computer-based trials of medical products performed on populations of digital twins (aka virtual patients). Computer models/simulations are used to conceive, develop, and assess devices with the intended clinical outcome explicitly optimised from the outset (a-priori) instead of tested on humans (a-posteriori). This will include testing for potential risks to patients (side effects) and exhaustively exploring medical device failure modes before being tested in human clinical trials. In-silico evidence is still consolidating but is poised to transform how health and life sciences R&D and regulations are conducted. UK can take a leadership position in in-silico trials, which would cement its position as a global leader in health and life sciences, help drive the UK economy and provide UK citizens with early access to innovative health products.

In this talk, I will introduce the attendees to this world of new possibilities and summarise progress made in this new paradigm among academia, industry, regulators, and policymakers. A recent landscape report would be a helpful companion to this talk: Frangi, AF, et al. Unlocking the Power of Computational Modelling and Simulation Across the Product Lifecycle in Life Sciences: A UK Landscape Report. InSilicoUK Pro-Innovation Regulations Network, 2023, doi:10.5281/zenodo.8325274.

Speaker:

Professor Alejandro F Frangi FREng is the Bicentennial Turing Chair in Computational Medicine at the University of Manchester, Man-chester, UK, with joint appointments at the Computer Science and Health Sciences Schools. He is Director of the Christabel Pankhurst Institute on health technologies research and in-novation. He is also the Royal Academy of Engineering Chair in Emerging Technologies, with a focus on Precision Computational Medicine for in silico trials of medical devices. He is an Alan Turing Institute Fellow. His research vision was recently awarded an ERC Advanced Grant from the European Research Council under the Computer Science and Informatics (PE6) panel. He also leads the InSilicoUK Pro-Innovation Regulations Network.

Professor Frangi’s primary research interests lie at the crossroads of medical image analysis and modelling, emphasising machine learning (phenomenological models) and computational physiology (mechanistic models). He is particularly interested in statistical methods applied to population imaging and in silico clinical trials. His highly interdisciplinary work has been translated into cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and neurosciences.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Design For Life: Why Social Connectivity Matters (More Than Ever)

Background:

The lecture will explore the role of social capital and connectivity in nurturing health, wealth and happiness, including through inter-generational progress and drawing on recent research in the field. It will also discuss how public policy might be refocussed to build social capital.

Speaker:

Andrew Haldane CBE is the Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). He was formerly Chief Economist at the Bank of England and a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee. Andrew is Founder and President of the charity Pro Bono Economics, Vice-Chair of the charity National Numeracy and Chair of the National Numeracy Leadership Council. Andrew chairs the Government’s Levelling Up Advisory Council and is a member of the Chancellor’s Council of Economic Advisors. He was the Permanent Secretary for Levelling Up at the Cabinet Office from September 2021 to March 2022. Among other positions, he is Honorary Professor at the Universities of Nottingham, Manchester and Exeter, Visiting Professor at King’s College, London and a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Social Sciences.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Is Today’s Financial Literacy Education Fit For Purpose?

Tips And Ideas For Parents, Based On Granular Interactions With Teachers And Students, To Help Empower Children To Navigate An Ever More Complicated Financial World
Background:

Children are entering into an ever more complicated financial world ill-equipped to make educated decisions. How has financial literacy education kept up with the shift to a cashless society where children hardly ever touch a bank note, where the majority of the next generation do not trust institutions such as banks or where cryptocurrency is begging the question of what is “money”?

The answer quite simply is that it hasn’t, and the ramifications are dire for those leaving school without effective financial education as it puts them at high risk of financial abuse, fraud, and debt from an early age.

There could not be a more important time for financial literacy education given the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis as well as the stark statistics of youth indebtedness. Leveraging on his granular interactions with over 20,000 students in the UK and on working with the two largest school districts in the US, Quentin will provide a grassroots perspective of how financial literacy education needs to adapt to all the changes in the new economy as we accelerate towards a cashless society.

A study by the Money and Pensions Service confirmed that money habits and behaviours that will stick with children for life are formed by the age of seven which means that early year interventions are critical. He will provide some helpful tips to parents on how to navigate the evolving landscape and to better empower the next generation in making more informed decisions.

Speaker:

Quentin Nason is a seasoned financial professional whose career in investment banking and asset management spans over thirty years across four continents. While he has been at the forefront of the international capital markets and the development of new financial products, his true passion really lies in the field of education.

As a parent himself, Quentin saw first-hand the lack of financial literacy education in schools. Together with a group of volunteers, he decided to do something about it and created his educational charity City Pay it Forward.

Since 2016, Quentin and his team of fellow volunteers at City Pay it Forward have presented to and worked with over 20,000 students across the country. Working in partnership with Rising Stars, a leading educational publisher, he developed an award-winning Year 6 Teacher’s Manual which was delivered to every primary school in England, all 21,000 free of charge.

In addition to the primary school curricula, the charity organises work experience visits to the offices of corporate partners, enterprise challenges and investment competitions with the winning teams enjoying a visit to a City of London trading floor. City Pay it Forward is an independent, self-funded charity whose singular objective is to make a granular impact in the community.

Quentin, a dual US-UK national, has an MBA from the Wharton Business School and an MA in International Relations from the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Making The Future: The Opportunity In Digital Manufacturing

Manufacturing is the lifeblood of economic growth in the UK, directly and indirectly supporting 23% of the British Economy and providing directly and indirectly over 5 million jobs, with salaries above the whole economy average. While manufacturing is the biggest contributor to emissions in the world, it is also the sector that can help create the infrastructure and products that are going to empower the future of our world, from hydrogen infrastructure, to intelligent prosthetics and advanced medical equipment.

The future is promising and digital technologies can be the fuel that accelerates and enables a better future. From supercomputing that can accelerate design, to additive manufacturing to let design freedom flourish, to smart factories and supply chains where decision makers can make fast, proactive and informed decisions, to smart products with extended lives, to completely connected product life cycles that enable a more sustainable and circular economy. All of this, accompanied by co-pilots, powered by advanced AI technology, that can work alongside humans, making technology more accessible, propelling productivity and empowering humans to achieve more than ever before.

Speaker:

Dr Lina Huertas FIMechE is the Manufacturing Industrial Advisor in Microsoft UK, helping UK manufacturers drive their digital transformation and driving value by adopting the breadth of technology solutions available from Microsoft and its partner ecosystem. Her focus is primarily on smart factories, accelerated product development and agile supply chains, and underpinned by sustainability, security and a human-driven approach. She has spent 15 years working in digital manufacturing innovation, including roles in national strategy, technology strategy, team leadership, programme management and digital manufacturing tool development. She is a Mechanical Engineer by training, completed her PhD on digital manufacturing from Loughborough University and is a Fellow of the IMechE.

Lord Mayor’s Lecture | Ending The Destruction Of Our Undersea Cultural Heritage

Background:

For too long criminals have been destroying our undersea cultural heritage (UCH), damaging the marine environment, and desecrating naval war graves through unauthorised salvage of wreck sites. No longer. By using satellites and artificial intelligence originally designed to stop illegal fishing, we can now detect unauthorised salvage activities anywhere in the world and help hold these criminals to account. The Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust (MAST) and OceanMind have teamed up to provide the Maritime Observatory, a UCH intelligence hub that supports governments with surveillance of important sites and investigation into suspicious activity. The Maritime Observatory is providing expert support to several active international cases.

Speakers:

Nick Wise is founder and CEO of OceanMind, a non-profit organisation dedicated to protecting the world’s oceans. Using satellites and artificial intelligence, OceanMind powers effective fisheries enforcement and enables more responsible seafood sourcing, increasing compliance and sustainability. Building on this success, OceanMind is now developing AI to detect modern slavery on the oceans, particularly in fisheries, and to detect the desecration of war graves through unauthorised undersea salvage.

Nick has been designing large scale, highly secure software solutions for over 20 years, using innovative techniques focused on market needs. Before joining the ranks of social entrepreneurship, Nick’s journey saw him starting an Internet security business, as CTO of a mature SME, and managing product development in a billion-dollar multinational. As a DRK Entrepreneur, Nick now empowers people to solve global issues with technology.

Dr Giles Richardson is a maritime archaeologist, MA (Hons) PCIfA and an Invincible Project team diver. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Bath’s History of Technology Research Unit, and completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford’s Centre for Maritime Archaeology. His research focuses on the archaeology of the Victorian Royal Navy. He continues to work on projects across Europe, notably the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology’s excavations at the sunken Ptolemaic city of Heracleion-Thonis in Egypt. He holds HSE Surface Supply (Offshore Top-Up) and Professional SCUBA qualifications, and is a BSAC Advanced Diver and Open Water Instructor and a PADI Open Water Instructor.