techUK Subsea Cables Summit 2024

Ian Corden

CEO, Peira Consulting Ltd.

Ian brings over 30 years of experience in the telecoms, technology, and digital sectors, gained via numerous roles and engagements in global industry and consulting.  

His experience covers the full industry life cycle from R&D and investor funding, through strategic planning and M&A advisory, to procurement, hands-on engineering, systems architecture, and programme delivery and recovery, together with extensive expertise in policy development, regulation, telecoms finance, and radio spectrum management. Formerly with PwC TMT Strategy & Economics London, PA Consulting, Nokia, Oracle, and Bell Labs, Ian’s experience spans both technology and commercial domains and includes telecoms / digital policy and regulation, digital strategies, radio spectrum planning and valuation, investment / transaction advisory, C-suite advisory, performance and process improvement, bid development, network and IT systems transformation, and large-scale technology programme management. His client base includes national and local governments, industry bodies, regulators, telcos, ISPs, enterprises, vendors, investors, banks, and law firms.  

With Bell Labs USA, he was awarded the President’s Prize. Ian holds PhD and BSc (1st Class Hons, IET Prize) degrees in Telecommunications and Electronic Engineering, PgD Management and Finance, UK Chartered Engineer, and Fellow IET. 

He is a Visiting Professor at The University of Surrey, a role providing commercial and industry support to the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (5/6GIC). 

Sophie Greaves

Head of Telecoms and Spectrum Policy, techUK

Sophie Greaves is Head of Telecoms at techUK, and represents the most innovative and impactful companies in the UK’s communications ecosystem, spearheading valuable policy work in telecoms security, adoption of advanced connectivity, and wider market development.

Sophie also oversees the Spectrum Policy Forum, the UK’s proactive industry-led sounding board on future policy and approaches on spectrum. The Forum is a cross-industry agent for promoting the role of spectrum in society and the maximisation of its economic and social value to the UK.

Prior to joining techUK, she completed a masters in Film Studies at UCL. Her dissertation focused on the commercial relationships and digital infrastructure of Netflix, its impact on the media industry, and how the streaming platform interacted with telecommunications regulators and ISPs. She was included in the 2023 Women in Trade Association Powerlist and recognised as one of the most influential people in UK tech by Computer Weekly's UKtech50 Longlist.

Gerard Parr

Full Professor in Telecoms Engineering, University of East Anglia

Gerard is a Full Professor in  Telecommunications Engineering and has been  Head of School of Computing Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich from 2016-2023 which involved a range of senior management roles and responsibilities covering Teaching, Research, Innovation and  Outreach. 

He holds a PhD in Self-Stabilising Protocols from Ulster University, aspects of which were completed with UCL and one of the founding Fathers of the Internet (Professor Jon Postel) whilst a Visiting Research Scientist at the DARPA/University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute in Marina Del Rey, Los Angeles. 

Within his academic career, areas of research include Wireless Sensor Clouds, UAV for Disaster Response Communications, ICT for the Rural Economy, delay-sensitive protocols, and energy-aware autonomic networking and IoT-edge computing. He has attracted several £millions of external research and commercial funding and has advised governments on the allocation of funding to large-scale projects valued in total at approximately £3 billion. His industrial collaborations have included companies such as BT, Intel, IBM, Aviva, Ericsson, Siemens, InfoSys, Wipro, and SAP.  Professor Parr is an invited member of the EPSRC Peer Review College. His academic research collaborations include MIT, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Arizona, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, USC-ISI Los Angeles, University of Florida, University College London, Southampton, Surrey, QMUL, Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Oxford, St Andrews, Exeter, Lincoln, Lancaster , Cambridge, Beijing University of Posts & Telecommunications (BUPT), Tsinghua University, Peking University and Indian Institutes of Technology in Mumbai, Madras, Kanpur, Hyderabad, Delhi, Mandi and IISc Bangalore. He was previously appointed as a Visiting Professor to the Science Foundation Ireland/CTVR at Trinity College Dublin and to the Emirates-BT Innovation Centre (EBTIC) at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi- UAE. He was previously Chief Scientific Advisor to Project KELVIN, an initiative led by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment (DETI) in Belfast  and the Irish Department for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR).  This led to the installation of a submarine telecommunications cable connecting the north coast of Northern Ireland and Dublin  to a transatlantic submarine cable linking North America with Southport in England, and onwards to continental Europe. He has been International Scientific Advisor to the UK EPSRC National Centre for Doctoral Training in Communications Engineering at the University of Bristol. He was appointed as Senior Guest Editor for prestigious IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications (JSAC) for a Special Issue on Communications Challenges and Dynamics in UAVs. He has extensive experience of working with developing economies, in particular, India, where he was the UK Academic co-ordinator for the major EPSRC-DST India-UK Advanced Technology Centre in Next Generation Networks Systems and Services which was the largest collaboration of its kind between UK and India in the ICT sector attracting total investment of over £20 million and also helped establish a Virtual Graduate Research School for 67 PhD students under the UKIERI Programme. Presently Professor Parr is working on the development of the East of England Smart Emerging Technologies Institute- SETI (one of the recommendations from the UK BEIS Science Innovation Audit) with colleagues from Essex, Cambridge, UEA and BT Adastral. SETI will look at innovations in 5G, IoT, AI-Big Data/Cloud Computing and Testbeds across a number of sectors, including Energy, Intelligent Manufacturing, AgriTech and Smart-Supply Chains. Gerard was awarded an MBE in Queens New Year Honours for 2018 for contributions to Telecommunications Infrastructure in Northern Ireland.  During January 2020 Prof Parr was elected to the Strategic Advisory Committee for the UK Government UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) ICT Programme to assist with strategic developments, funding panels and identification of funding priorities.  Most recently Gerard has been  successful in attracting Co-I funding for a 5-year EPSRC Next Stage Digital Economy Hub called DIGIT (Digital-Innovation-Growth-Impact-Transformation) valued over £12 million which will explore methodologies and business impact of  Digital Transformation in Large Organisations. During 2021 Gerard was also successful as PI to attract £1.4 million funding for  the “UK-India Future Networks Initiative” with IISc Bangalore, IIT Delhi, UCL, Surrey, Southampton and BT. Most recently in December 2022 he was successful as a Co-PI on a bid to UKRI-ESRC concerning Digital Technology in Teacher Agency. The £5.3 million fund will support a total of nine projects. He is also a Member of the UKRI-EPSRC Digital Security & Resilience Advisory Group which aims to put a spotlight on digital technologies relevant to the security, defence, and resilience of the UK. The research supported will aim to create a more secure and resilient digital society, that is robust and prepared to withstand shocks and challenges in an increasingly interconnected digital world.