Steve Welch

Currently Director of Ideas and Capability – the directorate that looks after strategic relationships with Universities (including the KTP programme), emerging innovations, and ‘place’ – I am one of the founding directors of Innovate UK KTN.

I have extensive knowledge transfer experience, dating back to the earliest Faraday Partnerships and running through all of KTN history, up to the Electronics, Sensors, Photonics KTN, of which I was CEO.

Before moving into knowledge transfer full-time, I had an extensive academic career designing, building and using scientific spacecraft instrumentation, based at University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory. During this time, I was also involved in teaching and research in systems engineering, and I have delivered bespoke teaching, research and consultancy in computer science, electronic engineering and systems engineering to large corporations and space agencies around the world.

I have a PhD in High Energy Astrophysics, and am a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a member of the UK Space Agency’s Earth Observation advisory Committee.