Biography:

Professor Emeritus David Lane CBE FREng FRSE is a passionate scientist, innovator, educator & personal investor in the twin disciplines of Robotics & AI. A founding startup-to-scaleup award winning CEO (SeeByte Ltd/Inc Edinburgh, San Diego) he is/has been Chairman and NED in 5 businesses & 1 fund in UK, US, Norway, Hong Kong with experience in Edtech, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Offshore Energy, Defence and Food.

Over a 40 year Academic career as Professor & Founding Director, he co-created the Edinburgh Centre for Robotics and National Robotarium, a £150m joint venture between Heriot-Watt and Edinburgh Universities, forming a research and translation hub with >150 staff and PhD students. This leadership included the EPSRC/Industry £40m ORCA Hub, the largest dedicated offshore robotics R&D programme in the world.

He has published more than 300 peer reviewed papers engineering advanced cognition, sensing and bio-inspiration into unmanned systems, and has held visiting scientific appointments in the US, China and with NATO. He led the 2014 UK RAS2020 Robotics & Autonomous Systems Strategy that resulted in more than £500M of UK Govt & Industry support, has been appointed to the UK Govt AI Council, and appointed co-Chair of the UK Robotics Growth Partnership by UK Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation.