Who we are

Paul founded Open Innovations in 2013 with the mission to create a place and community to unleash the power of open data and deliver innovation across the region.

He is an entrepreneur who has built Open Innovations into a 21st century Institution and co-founded DataCity which is a Data as a service Company whilst running his own innovation company. His primary role at Open Innovations is twofold - providing the drive, direction and purpose for Open Innovations and leading and developing our Innovation Services.

Originally trained as an environmental scientist at Lancaster University and Imperial College he worked for British Coal, ICI and leading global consultancies and clients for nearly 20 years before transitioning his skills to apply them in the domains of Smart Cities, Open Data, Open Innovation and Innovation.

He is an accredited Cognitive Edge practitioner and applies these techniques in the Open Innovations Innovation practice.

Kathryn's background is in media, marketing and communications. She started out many years ago as a media strategist at Omnicom in London. Now she looks after all the business strategy, comms, design, events and planning at Open Innovations: kathryn.connell@open-innovations.org

Tom has a PhD in computational biology and now runs software and data consultancy imactivate. He is an associate at Open Innovations where he'll be happy to help you solve problems you have using data. He's particularly interested in data on housing, transport, and income inequality both within Leeds and across the UK and Europe. He blogs at tomforth.co.uk and keeps a more polished internet presence at imactivate.com.

Amy has a background in the creative arts, specialising in digital illustration and animation. Projects have ranged from icon design and basic UI prototypes to illustrated maps and comics. Her interest in the world of data is based around telling stories with data and creating info-graphics. She is passionate about environmental and animal welfare issues, and thinks using data stories is the ideal way to reach audiences and change attitudes.

Giles is an independent IT Consultant based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. He used to work for a large international corporation, and has a wealth of experience in designing and supporting large IT systems, particularly in the public sector.

He has been an Open Innovations associate since 2015, when he helped one of the Open Innovations partners work out how best to go about publishing Open Data. You’ll also meet him on the hack days and events.

He has a passion for local community, and in response to a couple of devastating flooding events in his town, he developed the Hebden Rising website which aimed to support the business community during recovery.

Stuart is a former radio astronomer who has studied distant galaxies and the early universe, worked on a global network of optical telescopes, published a book of cosmic infographics created from open data, and has done some long bike rides.

At Open Innovations, Stuart works on a range of projects using open data from visualising the Internet-of-things sector to mapping open datasets in the north of England to hex cartograms of election results to visualising future energy scenarios and measuring website carbon emissions. He also built and maintains our website.

Taz graduated with a BSc in Neuroscience from the University of Leeds, with a year in Canada where she worked as a Research Assistant creating a proof-of-concept for a pirate-themed virtual-reality brain-computer interface. Her interest in open data began with her contribution to a research project investigating a new course format that integrated open science practises in the teaching of Neuroscience research methods. Since graduation, Taz has had experience as a Software Engineer and Digital Project Manager in a marketing agency, before joining Open Innovations as a Consultant & Delivery Manager.

Aside from her passion for all things brains and data, Taz also adores music, is an avid gig attendee and piano player who is partial to a good hike and wild swimming (in the summer!).

A former scientist, Michelle is passionate about the environment and our impact on the planet. She joined Open Innovations as an Associate in 2021 to lead our work on #PlanetData, and is also an associate at Icebreaker One and Chair of Open Data Manchester.

Michelle has over a decade's experience of working in not-for-profit organisations with clients including local authorities, central governments, multi-national organisations and the European Commission. Her work focusses on helping people, communities and organisations have greater access to the data, information, skills and opportunities to help them make better and more informed decisions.

When not working, Michelle spends her time outside as much as possible, including feeding local birds, swimming, cycling and kayaking.

Christian is an economist, data scientist and policy wonk, with over 12 years' experience working in and around regional and urban economic analysis, modelling and forecasting to support policy. Having worked in local government, think tanks, business organisations and academia, his passion these days is using large-scale data and interactive web applications to help people better tell the story of their own local economies to policymakers and stakeholders through advanced analytics and GIS tools.

Louis recently graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Jurisprudence. He will be helping with research and development particularly in the field of data ethics. With a strong background in writing and comms he will be also be a Communications Assistant, helping to project our online presence and assisting the smooth running of affairs.

He is working from the email louis.connell@open-innovations.org.

Luke recently graduated with a master’s degree in physics from the University of Birmingham. For his dissertation he studied the gravitational waves that are emitted by colliding black holes, applying neural networks to produce rapid estimates for the physical parameters of the system.

At Open Innovations Luke will be working as a Data Scientist, supporting projects with his analysis and modelling skills. He hopes to help solve real-world problems using open data.

Outside work Luke spends time producing music and playing ultimate frisbee.

Dan originally studied physics before obtaining a PhD in the field of biophysics. His postgraduate work centred around studying interactions between DNA and protein molecules with microscopy techniques.

At Open Innovations he works as a developer on collaborative projects that seek to use open data to solve problems and drive social, economic, and environmental change. He is particularly interested in data on transport, waste, and housing. One example of a project he has worked on is the Leeds Bins (~70,000 downloads) mobile app.

Marc has a PhD in Civil and Geometric Engineering and is a visiting Professor at UCL. His specialist research interests are in inequalities reduction and unwarranted variation in health. After a career in management consultant and academia, Marc is now the Chief Analytical Officer at East Kent Hospitals NHSFT and is the Chair of the Kent and Medway Analytics Board. With Paul, Marc developed the #opendatasaveslives initiative during Covid.

Gareth Dennis is a railway engineer and writer. He also lectures in railway systems at the University of Birmingham and campaigns for sustainable transport as a tool for equality as well as to tackle climate change. As a writer and transport commentator he has appeared regularly on television, radio and in print, making the case for major public transport investment, and his arguments explaining the need for High Speed 2 - "it's all about released capacity" - are quoted regularly by journalists and politicians. He is a co-founder of the Campaign for Level Boarding, vice-chair of the York section of the Permanent Way Institution, and hosts a weekly railway video podcast on YouTube called #RailNatter.

Beate Kubitz is a transport consultant with experience in future mobility and the role it plays in carbon reduction through research, innovation and policy development. Her experience includes contributing to the development of plans for Mobility as a Service and Mobility Hubs for UK authorities, work on adoption of novel shared and active transport modes from DRT to e-cargobikes.

Previously she worked for the shared transport organisation CoMoUK (previously Carplus Bikeplus), and automotive technology startup CarTap. She edited three editions of the Annual Survey of Mobility as a Service (for Landor Links) and has contributed to policy development on data and mobility for organisations including the Open Data Institute and the British Standards Institution. As a consultant she has also evaluated car clubs and bike share for shared transport operators.

In 2020 she was awarded a fellowship by the Foundation for Integrated transport to develop research into the impact of rural and periurban mobility on city centre traffic.

Henri is a knowledge engineer, working with semantic web technologies and knowledge graphs. At work, he specialises in ontology design, entity reconciliation and data provenance for semantic web databases. Henri has worked at a number of HRTech startups, and is passionate about modelling and serving AI models in the domain of people, skills, companies and occupations. He also previously worked at Tech Nation - the UK government body for tech entrepreneurs.