Distinguished Visiting Professors

Professor Sean Li

Professor Sean Li is the director of UNSW Materials and Manufacturing Futures Institute at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is leading the futures institute to transform the future of materials and manufacturing research from manipulation of atomic arrangements to device fabrication and high throughput industry scale manufacturing. He has invented several game-changing technologies that have already been licensed and used by industry.

As a leading academic, Professor Li has published his works in the prestigious journals of the field, including “Nature”, “Science”, “Nature Nanotechnology”, “Progress in Materials Science”, “Energy and Environmental Science” and “Advanced Materials” etc. Under his supervision, 82 postgraduate researchers including 42 Ph.D. and 40 M.Eng./Sci./Phil. students have successfully completed their degrees and embarked on remarkable global careers spanning Australia, USA, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Singapore and China. Professor Li’s laboratory is equipped with unique and world-class research facilities, and it is the most advanced laboratory of its type in Australia.

Professor Andy Neely, OBE, FREng, FAcSS

Professor Andy Neely is Professor of Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College. His previous appointments include Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor: Enterprise and Business Relations at the University of Cambridge, Head of the Institute for Manufacturing at the University of Cambridge, Royal Academy of Engineering Professor of Complex Services at the University of Cambridge, Deputy Director of the Advanced Institute of Management Research, a UK national research programme and the Director of the Centre for Business Performance at Cranfield University.

As Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Cambridge he had responsibility for all of the University’s activities relating to innovation, commercialisation, startups and spinouts. He sat on the boards of Cambridge Enterprise, the University’s technology transfer business and Cambridge Innovation Capital, a venture capital fund. He played a leading role in establishing Innovate Cambridge, a city-wide initiative to develop a community-based innovation strategy for Cambridge.

During his career, Andy has founded several major research centres and groups, including the Cambridge Service Alliance and the Centre for Digital Built Britain, both at the University of Cambridge and the Centre for Business Performance at Cranfield University. He is co-founder of Anmut, the data valuation specialists and a Non-Executive Director at the High Value Manufacturing Catapult.

He has written over 100 books and articles, including “Measuring Business Performance", published by the Economist and "The Performance Prism", published by the Financial Times. In 2020, he was awarded an OBE for services to research and university-industry collaboration.

Last modified on 5 December, 2024