Dr Mark Swift
| Head of SME Group, WMG at the University of Warwick
Mark leads WMG’s SME Group and its initiatives focused on helping small business businesses grow through research led innovation, leadership and developing new skills.
The aim of the Group is to enable SME’s and Mid-Caps manufacture more in the UK through helping companies to improve their products, process and technologies by accelerating and de-risking the uptake of innovation. The Group is recognised as a national leader in how universities support innovation in SMEs.
Precious as Chief Technology Officer of the WMG centre High Value Manufacturing Catapult, Mark has primarily responsible for delivering the WMG technology strategy and the advancement of technology across the WMG’s Catapult. This helped to secure £99m of government funding.
In over 10 years at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) this has included designing and operating an online engineering eMarketplace with over 12,000 members, constructing a purpose built multi-disciplined 5,000m2 digital laboratory, leading the International Institute for Product and Service Innovation. His work has culminated in starting over 10 new hi-tech start-up businesses, working with hundreds of small businesses and creating, or safeguarding, over a 1,000 industry jobs.
Mark has a background in manufacturing systems, previously working for International Paper, Hasbro and BMW UK.