Non-Executive Director and Consultant

Roland’s story can be summed up as a passionate drive for successful innovation in technology. Back in 2001 he followed his special interest in cars, to professional motorsport electronics at Pi Research. Starting with data analysis for Mercedes Supertrucks and Barry Sheene’s old teammate, Steve Parrish. He then innovated bespoke sensor applications and engineered data acquisition architecture, driver displays and analysis frameworks, for the World Series by Nissan. As Ford acquired Pi and Cosworth, he was headhunted into Formula 1, enjoying time as systems engineer for telemetry and vehicle electronics with Mark Webber at Jaguar, and Giancarlo Fisichella’s V10 engine at Jordan F1.

During the best part of a decade traveling the world, he also applied those electronics to new verticals, everywhere from the west coast US automotive aftermarket, leveraging viral marketing from Hollywood set filming with Ken Block, to health and usage monitoring of historic aircraft at Duxford and the Red Bull Air Races in Abu Dhabi. Leading the powertrain control systems business unit at Cosworth Electronics concluded that chapter, before jumping onto the new wave of hybridisation and battery electric vehicles with Ricardo.

His keynote is inspired by what came next. He first saw the European collaborative R&D ecosystem from that vantage point as Chief Engineer of Hybrid and Electric Systems. Those insights gave him a stepping stone to the leadership of Transport at Innovate UK, a $1bn CR&D portfolio. However, after completing his Executive MBA on the side, he couldn’t help but take the plunge into venture backed start-ups. He joined Five AI to abstract the vehicle platform and enable the machine learning and software engineering teams. Together their aim was to bring self-driving taxi fleets to London and beyond…