Summary

I innovate practical solutions to real-world problems: one of the UK’s first Internet Service Providers; Europe’s first virtual prepaid card issuer; invented and manufactured a SAP- and ECO- approved smart radiator valve that requires no set-up and saves carbon by automatically turning down the set-point when a room is vacant.

Service roles have included company directorships for over 30 years including in payment services, vice-chair of a school governing board and an inventors’ club, liaison between a local authority and multiple green community groups.

Other than founding companies, I have worked in tech journalism, defence, oil, and banking.

I am focussed on tackling climate change and its impacts through energy use.

I also drive data privacy and security, given my experience in finance, education, defence, IoT and Internet Service Provision.

In every role I create, persuade, fund, lead and deliver.

Research

2023– : reducing the climate impact of UK home heating, at the University of Surrey.

Projects Summary

2012–2022: OpenTRV (aka Vestemi/Caredall) — founder/CTO, OpenTRV open source project and business with the initial goal of cheaply eliminating the ~50% wasted heat (and carbon emissions) of domestic space heating in the UK and across Europe, up to 8% of the region's entire footprint. Radbot came to market in 2018. In 2020 Radbot entered the SAP PCDB. In 2021 Radbot was approved for ECO by Ofgem, and the product was acquired by Secure Meters.

1994–2014: investment banking consulting/contracting tech roles for Nomura (twice), Monis, Lehman Brothers (twice, ~10 years), Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), BarCap, Deutsche Bank, etc; mainly credit/derivatives, often from concept to production. (Some time spent on Y2K, dot-com and other retail/finance in this interval, see below.)

2002–2006: CTO/founder of Ixaris, leading the design, development and build-out of the J2EE-based EntroPay virtual credit-card system, with a (mainly-Malta-based) R&D staff for this UK company.

2000–2001: various dot-COM projects including VP Technology for digitalRUM, a dot-com m-commerce B2B2C startup in London. Design authority and team manager from business requirements though to beta with rapidly expanding team.

2011: BP plc greenfield architecture/development on various projects including ship/cargo tracking. 1993: BP Exploration, managing complex and evolving multi-vendor distributed computing resource.

1991–1993: Technical Editor, then Editor, of Parallelogram, an international technical journal covering parallel and high-performance computing.

1990–1993: consultant to BAeSema (previously Dowty-Sema) on high-performance and open-systems technology on the largest-ever Ada projects in the world to then (over £100m) for the SSCS and SMCS frigate and nuclear-submarine weapons command-and-control systems. Handled material classified up to NATO Confidential.

1988– : MD of ExNet Ltd. Raised seed capital whilst an undergraduate to do private research in networking and distributed operating systems. Created one of the UK's first Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

1985–1986: Personal Robots Ltd, Systems Engineer. Designed and implemented the real-time, multiprocessor, distributed robotics hardware and operating system in products featured on the BBC's "Tomorrow's World" and "Wogan". Later on contract to PRL while at university.

Education

2023– : Doctoral researcher in Environment and Sustainability, University of Surrey.
1991–1994: MSc in Theoretical Computer Science (Parallel Systems), University of Edinburgh.
1986–1990: 2:1 BSc (Hons) Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, University of Edinburgh.

Sample Editorial

2024: "To Zone or Not to Zone When Upgrading a Wet Heating System from Gas to Heat Pump for Maximum Climate Impact: A UK View" DOI:10.3390/su16114710
2007– : Earth Notes "green" site.
2007– : various Register articles.
2001: "First Person" article for New Scientist magazine.
1996– : DHD Multimedia Gallery pro-bono source of free multimedia.
1991–1993: various articles and journalism for Parallelogram HPC/supercomputing magazine, eventually becoming Editor.
1989: "Cloning and characterization of an Escherichia coli gene, pcnB, affecting plasmid copy number": Molecular Microbiology DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2958.1989.tb00239.x (PubMed ID 2677604, scan).
1984: ETI (Electronics Today International): "Perpetual Pendulum" project.

Energy / Climate Change

2024– : interim chair of Transition Town Kingston.
2022– : interim chair of Kingston Environment Forum, liaising between Royal Borough of Kingston and local green/eco community groups.
2020– : member of Royal Borough of Kingston "Transition to a Green Economy" taskforce.
2020: patent application GB2006828.4 "Radiator Thermostatic Control" (WO2021224586A1, GB2594749A); granted UK 2594749 2022-08-31.
2013– : OpenTRV/Radbot open-source software and hardware project to help improve heating efficiency of existing UK housing stock, eg see FOSDEM talk.
2013–2016: founding director of Kingston Community Energy Industrial and Provident Society.
2012–2014: DECC (UK's Department of Energy and Climate Change) pro bono work/advice.
2012: our house became UK SuperHome number 119, for energy/carbon savings of over 60%.
2011– : Fieldlines renewable energy forum moderator/admin.
2009–2021: Ecotricity (and others) collaboration for the LIVE - Carbon content of the UK Grid page based on own more geeky version, and other renewable-energy visualisation work.
2007– : earth.org.uk carbon-footprint-reduction site including live GB grid carbon intensity monitor and @EarthOrgUK Twitter feed.

Public Service

2011–2022: school community/parent governor at King Athelstan Primary School (2012–2022 Resources Committee Chair, 2017–2022 Vice-Chair of Governing Body).
2007–2008: accredited UK Election Observer.
1992– : ExNet was one of the very first UK Internet Service Providers, to open up the market, as a public good, and continues to provide pro bono services.
2000– : Java "Expert" in Sun's Java Community Process standards body in several areas (JSR-41, JSR-65, JSR-96) and assisted informally with their CLDC/KVM design for J2ME.

Personal

Born York, England, 1967. Numerate technophile, would-be traveller and linguist.

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Contact tel: +44 20 8296 5555; email: d@hd.org; www: http://d.hd.org/.