Prof John Beacham profile

Prof John Beacham’s chief expertise is in new product innovation, science and technology strategy, R&D, business-higher education partnerships and networks. He has spent 35 years in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry where his last post was research manager and chief scientist for ICI plc. He was awarded a CBE in the 2000 New Year’s Honours List ‘for services to the chemical industry’.

He is chairman of COGENT the Sector Skills Council for the Chemical/Oil and Gas/Nuclear Industry, chairman of University of Liverpool Enterprises Ltd (ULivE) and a director of the newly formed Bioscience for Business Knowledge Transfer Network. He is also a director of ‘TrusTech’, a NHS NW exploitation company and CLIK, the CCLRC exploitation company. He has strong links to the academic sector where he is an honorary professor at both Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores Universities and was awarded a DSc in 2004 by the new University of Manchester for his work on the amalgamation of UMIST/Manchester University.

He is currently Honorary President of the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI). He has also served as chairman of the National Chemical Sector Foresight Panel, as a member of the EPSRC User Panel, chairman of Halton Hospital NHS Trust, as a member of Liverpool University Council and as a director of LGC, an analytical services company.

For the last eight years he has also been an industrialist/advisor to the DTI and has recently written ‘A 60 minute Guide to Innovation - Turning Ideas into Profit’ (www.dti.gov.uk/innovation)