STEM Conference 2019: Highlights

Student success in higher education depends on a careful balance of factors including engaged learning, environments conducive to learning and the desire to develop in students the knowledge, skills, behaviours and attributes expected of graduates. The conference is the ideal opportunity to collaborate and learn from other higher education professionals within STEM disciplines and to share best practice.

This two-day conference, featuring a mix of peer-led workshops, presentations and respected keynotes will provide a forum for each of the individual STEM disciplines as well as opportunities to learn from cross-disciplinary practice.

Chris Warhurst

Chris Warhurst PhD FRSA is Professor and Director of the Warwick Institute for Employment Research (IER) at the University of Warwick, one of Europe’s leading multi-disciplinary centres for employment research. Chris is also a Trustee of the Tavistock Institute in London, an Associate Research Fellow of SKOPE at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

He is an internationally recognised expert on job quality and skills. He has published 16 books, including The Skills That Matter (2004), Are bad jobs inevitable? (2012) and the Oxford Handbook of Skills & Training (2017). He has undertaken around 70 research projects and, with colleagues, is currently working on projects examining: the future of work for the European Commission’s Joint Research Council, the graduate labour market for the Nuffield Foundation and investments in new technology for the CIPD. His work is cited in the UK Government’s 2017 Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices and over 2018 he was part of a working group developing job quality measures for the UK Government led by the Carnegie UK Trust.

Since 2014 he has been a member of the Skills Policy Analysis Academic Panel for BIS, now DfE. He has also been an expert advisor on skills to the UK, Scottish and Australian Governments as well as to the OECD. Working with the UK Government and the OECD he is hoping to start work on regional pilots to improve skill use in firms in 2019.

Elizabeth Pollitzer

Elizabeth Pollitzer trained originally in Biophysics and obtained PhD in Information Science from the University of London (Kings’ College). She spent over 20 years as researcher and lecturer at the Department of Computing at Imperial College. In 2000 she co-founded an IT security solutions company for SMEs. Elizabeth is director of Portia, a not-for-profit organisation she co-founded in 2001 with a group of women scientists and engineers at Imperial College, to focus on evidence- and consensus-led actions to raise awareness of and remove gender bias in science knowledge and practice.

Elizabeth has advised the European Commission on a variety of gender and technology issues, and contributed to many peer review panels. In 2011, she established the Gender Summit platform for dialogue to bring scientists, gender experts, and policy makers together to improve understanding of gender issues in science. Today the Gender Summit is present in six global regions with 7000-strong community of experts and practitioners. Her current preoccupation is how to reconcile the aspirations of the UN Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda and the ambitions of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.