Henry Royce Institute appoints former Rolls-Royce Group Director as interim CEO
04 Jul 2018
The Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials has appointed Chris Barkey FREng as its Chief Executive.
Chris joins the Royce having previously held a number of senior positions in a 30-year career at Rolls-Royce, including Group Director, Engineering and Technology. He will lead the Institute’s development as a national centre for excellence in materials science research and innovation.
Chris said, “I’m delighted to be joining the Royce as it continues to invest in the UK’s world-leading advanced materials capability.”
“The Institute’s role in exploiting new research is vital to delivering innovation that will be felt in our everyday lives, across a range of sectors from manufacturing and transport, to energy and health.”
The Henry Royce Institute and its nine founding Partners will make accessible more than £330m of advanced materials facilities and equipment by 2020, when its new national hub opens at the University of Manchester.
Chris added, “The Royce’s ethos of collaboration, between academic partners and industry, is fundamental to its ambition. My focus is on growing those opportunities to collaborate that will accelerate innovation and create positive impacts across the UK.”
In his time at Rolls-Royce, Chris was responsible for engineering across a portfolio of civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine, nuclear and power systems businesses.
He will take up the Chief Executive position on an interim basis until December 2018, working closely with Royce Chief Scientist, Regius Professor Philip Withers, and Chair, Baroness Brown of Cambridge.
Baroness Brown said, “Chris brings a wealth of senior management and leadership experience in one of the UK's iconic engineering companies.
“He will also bring a user perspective to the role of Chief Executive which will help align the Royce with industry and create new models to drive commercial benefit from materials innovation.”
The Royce brings together an interconnected set of research facilities across its Partner institutions; the universities of Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Cambridge, Oxford, and Imperial College London, as well as the UK Atomic Energy Authority and National Nuclear Laboratory. Each Partner champions a core research area, providing leadership by working with related organisations in the field and identifying new challenges and capability gaps.
As a national institute, the Royce facilities are technically supported and available to UK academics and to industry.
Professor Philip Withers said, “The UK has traditional been host to many islands of excellence in materials science. The Royce is creating a more connected eco-system for research, which will help new technologies move more quickly to a commercial realization.”
Professor Withers added, “Bringing Chris on board will help to ensure that the Royce delivers what industry needs; a flexible offering to help innovate and meet the advanced materials challenges of SMEs and multi-nationals.