Current team > Academic Staff

Background

From developing online trading systems at the London Stock Exchange in the 1980’s James moved into the manufacturing sector, initially as a project manager, leading a number of cost reduction and process improvement projects for many of the world’s leading manufacturing companies eventually establishing his own management consultancy company, James Ross Consulting (JRC) whose clients include: Masterfoods, Wedgwood, GlaxoSmithKline, Pepsico, Cadbury, Kellogg’s, P&G, Dairy Crest, Dunlop Slazenger, SAB Miller, Diageo, Microsoft and Novartis. Whilst retaining his interests in JRC, James took up a position at Pira as head of design and innovation and established the premier technology scouting and innovation program serving companies such as Tesco, Reckitt Benckiser, Mondi, Heinz and Kraft. James’ completed his 20 years in industry as the editor and editor-in-chief of a number of industry periodicals and the founder of the publishing company CBS Media.

James’ returned to academia in 2009, undertaking a Phd in engineering at Loughborough University and leading a two year EPSRC funded research project on the sustainable application of bio-polymers, leading to a one year extension ‘Proof of Concept’ project to explore the commercialisation of the research results and complete his Phd. In April 2012 James’ was appointed as a lecturer within the Wolfson School of M&ME where he was jointly responsible for establishing and delivering a new MSc course on sustainable engineering. In addition to the teaching responsibilities James is also the principle investigator on a number of research projects including Resource Efficient Manufacturing within the EPSRC Centre of Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability and the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Food.