Fully Booked | University of Warwick Showcase | Powering Progress: AI, Sustainability, and Global Leadership in Action

Professor Caroline Meyer is Provost at the University of Warwick where she supports the Vice-Chancellor in the academic leadership of the University.

Caroline was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) where she was instrumental in supporting and maintaining Warwick’s research excellence and pioneering the launch of the National Centre for Research Culture along with the new Warwick Research Spotlights. Prior to this, Caroline was Vice-Provost and Chair of the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine. Caroline has a PhD in Eating Disorders from The University of Southampton. She was a Lecturer in Clinical Psychology at the University of Birmingham and then worked in the Department of Psychology at Warwick and Warwick Medical School.

Caroline returned to Warwick in 2014, having been a Reader and then Professor at Loughborough University. Her research is predominantly within two key areas; eating disorders and workforce mental health and productivity. Her work involves many external partner organisations, including the NHS, industry partners and schools both nationally and internationally.

David joined WBS in 2008 as Academic Director for the Warwick Global Energy MBA after more than 20 years working in the energy & management consulting industries. After graduating in Natural Sciences from Christ’s College, Cambridge, David joined BP, working in the UK then the US. While in the US he completed his MBA at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he received the Dean’s Award for academic excellence. He then joined Gemini Consulting in 1995 and, after various mergers, was Vice President with the UK Energy, Utilities & Chemicals team of CapGemini.

In 2004 he joined Schlumberger as Vice President & Director in the team who created the firm’s management consulting arm, Schlumberger Business Consulting. David initially focused on the London-based team then spent a year in Houston as Director for SBC’s North & South America activities before returning to London and focusing on clients in Northern Europe.

With WBS he led development of the WBS Global Energy MBA and is now the Course Director for the WBS MSc Management. He leads the WBS Global Energy Research Network and works on a number of externally funded research programmes.

Professor Sai Gu is Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (East and South East Asia) working closely with Professor Michael Scott, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International), to maintain, extend and deepen our relationships with university partners in this region, and to pursue opportunities for funding, student mobility, and research and education collaborations.

Professor Gu obtained a PhD in Material Modelling from the University of Nottingham under the supervision of Professor Graham McCartney. He further pursued this material research with Professor Tian Jian Lu as Post-doc at the University of Cambridge. He was a lecturer at Aston University while working closely with Professor Tony Bridgwater in bioenergy research with focus on biomass fast pyrolysis. He continued to expand his bioenergy research at University of Southampton by developing an extensive international network in Asia, Africa and Europe from biomass resources, processing to product upgrading. He was appointed Chair in Clean Energy at Cranfield University in 2011 in partnership with Peterborough City Council to support the growth of high tech sectors. He subsequently established Centre for Bioenergy and Resource Management with large number of PhD and Post-doc researchers. He joined the University of Surrey as the Head of Chemical Engineering in 2015 and engineered the transformation of the department by substantially increasing its size and strengthening its research. He also led the merge of chemistry and chemical engineering as the Head of School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at University of Surrey.

Professor Gu has an international reputation for clean energy and material research. He has a long track-record of coordinating large collaborative projects with international partners and has successfully won tens of million pounds in grants from EPSRC, EU, Innovate UK and industry.

Professor Gu is an advocate of digital technologies for chemical engineering, pioneering the development of Industry 6th Sense technologies. He has established the Centre for Connected Plants of the Future to bring together multi-disciplinary expertise cross the University of Surrey, exploring the development of technology-driven innovation for chemical industry. He has led the EPSRC project “Stepping towards the industrial 6th sense”.

Dr Feng Mao is Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development and Director of Research at the School for Cross-Faculty Studies, University of Warwick. His interdisciplinary research explores the dynamic interactions between water, ecosystems, society, and technology to address complex sustainability challenges. His current work is structured around three interrelated themes:

• Water security and resilience under climate change, e.g., socio-hydrological systems, urban water resilience, and climate adaptation strategies across diverse geographical contexts.
• Data science and digital technologies for the environment and policy, e.g., GeoAI, data visualisation, environmental informatics, and creative technologies.
• Participatory and collaborative methods for sustainable development, e.g., serious games, art-science collaboration, and knowledge co-creation.

Dr Mao leads and collaborates on a wide range of research initiatives, including projects in collaborations with researchers and non-academic partners from sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, and Europe. He is a member of the NERC Future Leaders Council and sits on the UKRI-NERC Aviation Assurance Panel, helping to shape the strategic direction of UK environmental science. Internationally, he serves as Theme Lead for Water Security in a Changing World within the ACU Commonwealth Futures Climate Research Cohort Programme, supporting a community of researchers to address local climate change challenges through research, training, engagement, and knowledge exchange. Dr Mao also serves as Sustainability Lead for the AHRC-funded CreaTech Frontiers project and Academic Lead for the Research England-funded Games and Innovation Nexus (GAIN) project, playing an active role in bridging research, sustainability, and innovation across the creative industries.

His research focuses on developing machine learning algorithms and their applications in computer vision, autonomous driving, neuroscience, and medicine. He received his PhD from the School of Computer Science at Fudan University in 2014 and
completed his postdoctoral research at the Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in 2016.

From 2016 to 2019, he served as an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering at East China Normal University. Dr. Pu has published over 40 papers in top-tier journals and conferences, including IEEE TPAMI, NeurIPS, ICLR, and CVPR, accumulating over 2,500 citations on Google Scholar.

Hong Guo has spent her entire career in sustainability, beginning immediately after graduating from the University of Warwick. She has extensive experience in the sustainability and environmental area, through developing and implementing sustainability strategies, establishing ESG management models and improving performance.

She has more than 10 years of consulting experience and was the Manager of Climate Change and Sustainability Services at Ernst & Young Advisory Company Limited, helping Fortune 500 companies, including the retail industry and apparel industry, on sustainability strategy development and implementation.

Currently, she is the Senior Manager of Sustainability at adidas China. She joined in 2021 and is mainly responsible for developing sustainability strategy and leading and
promoting sustainability initiatives and projects, internal upskilling, and stakeholder engagement in China.

Austin Winters leads WPP’s AI, data and marketing technology capabilities in China, including WPP Open, the company’s AI powered marketing platform.

Based in Shanghai, Austin works with leading global and Chinese brands to help them use AI, data and technology to transform marketing, media and communications, from audience insight and planning through to campaign optimisation and measurement.
His work focuses on how platforms, data and AI enable organisations to scale creativity, improve effectiveness and build more intelligent marketing systems.

Before joining WPP, Austin worked across strategy, data and technology roles in the media and marketing industry across North America, Europe and Asia.

Dr John Hung previously spent more than three decades at Deloitte China, where he held senior leadership roles including Vice-Chairman, Governing Board Member and Chairman of Deloitte Consulting China. Before joining Deloitte, he trained as a Chartered Accountant in London and began his career as a civil and structural engineer.

John holds an MBA from Warwick Business School at the University of Warwick. In recognition of his distinguished career and longstanding contributions to the profession, John was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws (LLD) by the University of Warwick in 2023.

As Chair of the WBS China and Hong Kong Alumni Network, he has created a vibrant community that connects graduates with professional opportunities and supports their career journeys.

Professor Ren’s research includes Radiation in Combustion, Optical Detections of Greenhouse Gases by atellite Spectra and Machine Learning, Combustion Diagnostics by Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning and High-temperature Gas Spectroscopy.

Most recently, he was Principal Investigator on “The efficient retrieval of the vertical concentration profiles of greenhouse gases from atmospheric remote sensing spectral radiative measurements” National Natural Science Foundation of China and has published numerous journals on his chosen subject.

Professor Ren is a member of The Scientific Council of International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer (ICHMT) and in 2024 won three Teaching Awards for his work at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Satnam Rana-Grindley is the Director for Communications – Corporate Brand and interim lead for the Marketing, Communications and Insight department at The University of Warwick.

Prior to this role, Satnam had a career spanning over two decades at the BBC, where she served as a Broadcaster, Journalist and Arts and Culture Correspondent working on Midlands Today, national and international news programmes. With a passion for strategic storytelling, Satnam leads the communications team to strengthen and enhance the University’s reputation in line with its 2030 vision to be one of the world’s exceptional universities, helping to transform the West Midlands, UK, and world, for the collective good.