Crichton Conversation with Professor Kevin Shakesheff

Professor Kevin Shakesheff
Tuesday 17^th January 2023, 7 pm
The University of the Future

Professor Kevin Shakesheff joined The Open University in April 2021 as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation and is leading on areas to transform their impact through initiatives such as the Open Societal Challenges, Open Business Creators and accelerating the evolution of learning through collaboration with industry, further education and international partners.

After qualifying as a pharmacist in the early 1990s and completing a PhD in Advanced Drug Delivery Systems he began his research career under a NATO Fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2002 he became a Professor at the University of Nottingham, later becoming the first Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Science at the University.

Kevin is an expert in regenerative medicine and biologic therapies with over 350 publications and 13 patent families arising from his research. His invention of new biomaterials for tissue regeneration led to the formation and growth of the UK biotech company Locate Bio Ltd. He is Chair of the National Centre for Replacement, Refinement and Reduction (NC3Rs) and through that organization plays a leading role in the enhancing science through better design of experiments that use, or ideally replace, animals. He was Chair of OneNottingham, a strategic partnership between local government, local Universities, businesses and the public sector to enhance life in the city. He is a founding Director of the Festival of Science and Curiosity and was a Director of Biocity, a successful incubator for life science companies across the UK.

Kevin has enjoyed teaching many cohorts of undergraduate and postgraduate students, with a strong commitment to the use of technology to enhance student experience. He was an early adopter of online formative assessments to improve student preparation for examinations and to provide feedback that influenced their performance in summative assessments. He has also led activities to introduce entrepreneurship training to undergraduate and postgraduate science programmes. At a leadership level he introduced major new programmes with innovative course structures and teaching methodologies. These include establishing a five-year integrated programme to protect the visa status of international MPharm students; initiating the world’s first international pharmacy undergraduate programme with International Pharmacy Programme with Tianjin University for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TUTCM); and launching a new Hub to accelerate the launch of new courses in Artificial Intelligence and Data Science to assist Universities to adapt to radical changes to how taught programmes are delivered in the future through the use of digital technologies.

Kevin has published in more than 350 peer-reviewed outputs and is an inventor on 28 patent applications, with granted patents in many territories. His major achievements have been in the invention of new classes of biomaterials and pharmaceutical technologies for regenerative medicine.

This lecture is sponsored by the Open University in Scotland