Nigel was appointed as the Founding CEO of CPI in 2003, stepping down in 2020.  He established the public-private partnership that is CPI’s business model.  This was adopted as the model for what are now known as the Catapult centres.  CPI is a founding member of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and we continue to be the leading exemplar of a Catapult centre in our own right.

Nigel has an MA degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University.  Having worked for ICI pre-university and during university, he joined ICI on graduating.  He enjoyed a 20 year+ career and rose to divisional board level, before working directly for the Group CEO in London.  He worked across engineering, operations, technology management, and project and business management nationally and internationally in Taiwan, the US, Malaysia, and China.

Leaving ICI in 2001, he worked briefly for PwC Consulting focusing on the consolidation of the European High Technology.

Nigel is a past non-executive director and Senior Independent Director of the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s National Metrology Institute.  He is a Distinguished Visitor of NPL and currently chairs the Laboratory’s Commercialisation Panel.  He is the current Chair of Durham University’s Council, having served on Council for 8 years as a Lay Member, chairing the Ethics Committee, and sitting on the Audit and Risk, and Remuneration Committees.  He led a review of the University’s statutes in 2024, gaining Privy Council approval and then approval by the Monarch.

Nigel has been a part of several government commissioned reports into Business-University Interaction including those by Hauser, Heseltine, and Dowling.  He is seen as a leading thinker on translating knowledge and research into business – the process of innovation.  Nigel was awarded an MBE in June 2016 for services to Engineering.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.