Board members

Simon Devonshire OBE
Chairman
Simon is the current Chair of the Board.
He previously ran O2 Business, the business division of the mobile-network, and co-founded Wayra Europe, the business accelerator belonging to Telefonica. He is also a serial entrepreneur and is involved in several successful digital start-up companies.
In addition, Simon has previously worked for the government in his role as Entrepreneur in Residence (EiR) at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and is currently the EiR at the National Physical Laboratory.
Simon was awarded an OBE in 2016 for services to enterprise, enterprise promotion and humanitarian issues.

Dr Andrew Mackintosh
Non-Executive Director
Andrew has over 30 years of commercial and general management experience in publicly and privately owned high-technology businesses. His most recent executive role was as the founding chief executive of the Royal Society Enterprise Fund, a unique early-stage technology investment fund set up by the Royal Society and supported by philanthropy. Prior to that he was CEO of Oxford Instruments plc for nine years.
Andrew is chairman of Sphere Fluidics Ltd, a biotechnology tools company aiming to transform the search for new drugs and medicines. He is also chairman of Oxford Quantum Circuits Ltd, a spin-out from the University of Oxford, which is developing a quantum computer. He is currently the external lead on a Treasury-based project developing implementation plans to improve the commercialisation of government knowledge assets.
Andrew has a PhD in physics from the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of Hughes Hall, Cambridge. He has held non-executive director roles with several companies and served on national and regional committees concerned with technical innovation and competitiveness. He speaks fluent French and conversational Japanese.

David English
Non-Executive Director
David is the Finance Director at Dstl and previously was at the Ministry of Defence where he was the Head of Business Strategy & Governance, for the Department’s corporate finance team.
During this time, he led on the MOD’s asset sales programme and managed the Department’s relationship with its Trading Funds, including Dstl. Before this he had a wide range of roles across Defence, including responsibility for approvals and performance management in Defence Equipment & Support, financial planning and scrutiny within MOD Centre, and was a Private Secretary to the Defence Secretary leading on equipment and personnel matters.
In 2005 he completed a Masters in Business Administration at Imperial College London. David originally joined the Ministry of Defence in 1996 having completed a BEng in Avionic Systems at Bristol University and some hands-on engineering with GEC Marconi.

Mike Carr OBE
Non-Executive Director
Mike Carr was previously the Chief Scientific Officer for British Telecom (BT) and joined the Ploughshare Innovations board on 1 May 2016 as a non-executive director.
Mike brings experience from an extensive and esteemed international career in telecommunications, related research and associated innovation having developed BT’s licensing and venturing business.
Since leaving BT Mike has served on a range of boards including the EPSRC, Innovate UK and Ordnance Survey Ltd. He was elected President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) for the year from October 2018. Mike is currently a member Enterprise Board of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Director of ERA Foundation, a non-profit organisation which supports engineering skills development. He was awarded an OBE for services to innovation in 2017.

Professor Andy Bell
Non-Executive Director
Andy is the Chief Technical Officer for Dstl with responsibility for the direction and development of organisational strategy and non-nuclear Science & Technology capabilities to support the UK’s defence, security and resilience.
He is both a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the Institute of Physics, and is a Council Member of the former. He holds a visiting chair at the University of Southampton Chemistry Department, is a Fellow of the University, and chairs the Chemistry Advisory Board. He also sits on the Board of the Jill Dando Institute and is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL.