Based in the in the Business and Innovation Directorate, Dr Barbara Ghinelli is Director of Innovation Clusters and Harwell Campus.

She is responsible for the development of the Harwell Campus at UKRI-STFC. Barbara has worked alongside the Joint Venture partners to establish Harwell as an exemplar public-private partnership model that has driven economic growth, fostered national and international collaborations, attracted inward investment, and advanced the frontiers of science.

Barbara established the Cluster Model, deployed at both STFC’s Harwell and Daresbury Campuses and NW of England, and oversees the implementation of the Cluster Strategy across the UK. This led to the creation of six thriving innovation clusters in Space, HealthTech, EnergyTech, Digital and a new cluster in Quantum. These clusters supported the generation of 1000’s of new highly skilled jobs and attracted 100s of fast growing new organisations to the UK. She is also engaged in the development of Regional Defence and Security Clusters working with the MoD.

Barbara joined STFC from EADS Astrium (now Airbus DS) in 2010 as Executive Director of Business Development. Her successes include the creation of the International Space Innovation Centre (now Satellite Applications Catapult) at Harwell and securing the first multi-million investment into the High Performance Computing Centre (the Hartree Centre) at Daresbury.

At EADS Astrium she managed Business Development across Europe for the €3.2 billion joint ESA / EU Earth Observation Programme for Global Monitoring of Environment and Security (now Copernicus). She secured a number of large contracts during her time at Astrium.

Barbara graduated in Electronic Engineering at the University of York, completed her PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Synthetic Aperture Radars at the University of Sheffield, and holds a Certificate in Management from the Open University.

Barbara is also a Board Member at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and Chief Scientific Advisor to Advanced Research Clusters (ARC), Brookfield Asset Management.