AIRTO is pleased to confirm with immediate effect that Andrew Jamieson of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and Gillian Charlesworth of BRE Group have both been appointed to the Board as Member Directors of AIRTO.

Dr. Paul Howarth, Chair of AIRTO, said:

“Gillian and Andrew will bring a tremendous range of skills and expertise to the AIRTO Board and I am delighted they have agreed to join the team.”

Gillian Charlesworth is Chief Executive of BRE (Building Research Establishment) Group, once a Public Sector Research Establishment, privatised in 1997.  The Group is a charity-owned research and technology organisation for the built environment. It promulgates research and standards for the sector, providing testing and certification for building, safety, sustainability and security. Since 2018, BRE has been working as one of three partners on a major UK government research programme – the Construction Innovation Hub – on digitising and enhancing the productivity in the construction sector. This programme is intended to revolutionise how new social infrastructure buildings are constructed in one of the most practical and ambitious research and development programmes ever undertaken for UK construction. A profit-for-purpose organisation whose profits are committed to the BRE Trust charitable research foundation, BRE is also active in asset performance and benchmarking in markets including China and the USA.

Before joining BRE in May 2019, Gillian was an Executive Director at RICS, where she held a number of regulatory and corporate affairs roles including regulation of the surveying profession. She has worked with a number of different professional and commercial sectors during her career and has held roles in the UK civil service and various professional and trade bodies.

Andrew Jamieson is Chief Executive of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, a UK wide technology and innovation centre supporting businesses to accelerate the design, deployment and commercialisation of offshore renewable energy – wind, wave and tidal power. The Catapult provides deep technical expertise and market pathway support alongside large scale plant test capabilities, enabling UK supply chain growth from SMEs to the world’s largest companies.

He was previously at ScottishPower where he was latterly responsible for energy policy and regulation in the renewables business.
He sits on the Scottish Government’s Energy Advisory Board, is a past Chair of Renewable UK and Scottish Renewables and has led a number of reports for Government, including the Cost Reduction Task Force for Offshore Wind in 2012.
He is current Chair of the Catapult Network, speaking on behalf of all the UK’s Catapults in stakeholder forums.

Notes for editors

About AIRTO
AIRTO is the Association of Innovation, Research and Technology Organisations. Its
membership comprises approximately sixty of the principal organisations operating in the
UK’s Innovation, Research and Technology (IRT) sector. The IRT sector has a combined
turnover of £6.9Bn, employing over 57,000 scientific and technical staff (equivalent to the
academic staffing of the Russell Group of universities) and, for comparison, it is significantly larger than the network of Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany both in size and its scope of activities. The sector contributes £34Bn to UK GDP. AIRTO’s members work at the interface between academia and industry, for both private and public sector clients.

Members include independent Research and Technology Organisations, Catapult Centres, Public Sector Research Establishments, National Laboratories, some university Technology Transfer Offices and some privately held innovation companies.

For further information, please contact:
Dr. Jane Gate, Executive Director, AIRTO Ltd
email: jane.gate@airto.co.uk