Ged Hall
Dr Ged Hall
Innovation and Enterprise Senior Training and Development Officer
Tel: 0113 34 33357
Email: G.Hall@adm.leeds.ac.uk
Current role
Ged’s role, funded by EPSRC, is to provide training and development opportunities for researchers to assist them to develop enterprise and innovation skills.
These skills are useful in a number of ways:
- Ensuring the maximum impact from Research Council grants and therefore the success of future applications
- Enabling researchers, and the university, to diversify their income generation and funding routes
- Making researchers more effective in a range of careers inside and outside academia
Ged’s focus for the project will be two-fold:
- Work directly with researchers whose projects are at the point of commercialisation to provide specific and bespoke skill development to improve their chances of success.
- Provide a central programme, called Innovator, which can be accessed by researchers at different stages who are interested in developing their enterprise and innovation skills. The direct work with researchers will inform the scope and shape of Innovator.
If your research is ready for the next stage in its commercialisation journey but would appreciate support in taking this step please contact Ged.
Career profile
Ged is a graduate of the University of Leeds with a BSc in Chemistry (1990) and a PhD in Physical Chemistry (1995). He joined British Gas Research and Technology directly after his PhD in 1993. This commercial research experience included:
- air quality research looking at emissions from the operation of the UK gas network. This work included the specification, commissioning and acceptance testing of a new £1.4M mobile laboratory that could detect gas species, using lasers, up to a range of 1.5 km.
- gas flow modelling and its use in efficiently managing large complex gas pipline networks. This involved learning new technical skills in software development and mathematical simulation.
- underground asset management and protection. This again involved developing new skills in expert system design to automate the procedure for responding to customer requests for advice when working near underground pipelines.
In his final years in the gas and utility sector he used his technical skills in a business consultancy role in analysing customer needs and developing strategic implementation plans for new start-ups.
In 2003 he joined the University of Nottingham’s Graduate School to provide research training for the University’s 2500 research students and 800 research staff, including those based at its international campuses. He led the expansion of researcher training and the team responsible for it during his 5 years at Nottingham.
He has also works as a freelance trainer and has worked with researchers from De Montfort University, Queen Mary University London, Durham, a number of Scottish Universities and the Gateways Marie Curie Initial Training Network.
In 2008 he published, with Dr Jo Longman, ‘The Postgraduate’s Companion’ (SAGE). He was also shortlisted for the 2008 Times Higher Education Award for Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers with colleagues from other Midlands universities.
He left Nottingham in 2008 to join Liverpool Hope University. His role was multi-faceted and included:
- Director of the LearnHigher CETL with accountability for the finance (£5M project over 5 years) and project deliverables (from the 16 university partners).
- Deputy Director of the WriteNow CETL; working with the Research Director to provide robust research project management and embedding the research outcomes into university teaching and student support
- Head of Career Development; leading a team to develop and provide support for the university's students whatever their career aspiration.