Ian Proctor

Ian has a successful track record of supporting the commercialisation of early stage technologies and taking them through to a commercial offering, generating funding and returning revenues to a range of clients including academic institutions, SME’s and large corporates through a career working at the interface of academia, government and commerce. Experience in executive roles has allowed him to develop strategic planning and delivery capabilities and to provide required leadership and management to meet challenging priorities, targets and requirements. Ian was a founder and Managing Director for Dhahran Techno Valley Company (DTVC) growing all aspects of the business with focus on establishing a technology commercialisation business unit and science park management, setting the vision and strategy and subsequently building multi-disciplinary teams to facilitate the commercialisation of technologies which generate revenues and maximise social and economic benefit for Saudi Arabia. This included developing a number of economic development programmes and an early stage investment fund with private and public sector partners; leading on a number of proof of concept, seed and future investment rounds. Ian was then recruited to King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as Director of Technology Transfer. Previously, Ian worked at University of Manchester Intellectual Property Ltd (UMIP) gaining recognition for designing and managing technology based projects from initial research concept through to new products and services; delivering a number of license agreements with industry which generated economic benefits and has led on the set-up and financing of spin-out companies, across a number of industry sectors, including the medical, advanced materials, energy, oil and gas, and sensors sectors, including the design and transfer of new technology through service providers to end users. Ian has held a number of board, steering committee and advisory positions; designing and implementing a number of regional and national innovation programmes. £MM budget holder and establishing and growing teams to implement novel innovation and change programmes. Ian has a BSc (Hons) Biomedicinal Chemistry and Neuroscience, and a PhD in Chemistry from Keele Univeristy, UK.