Digital Catapult CEO Jeremy Silver announced as new Chair of the Catapult Network

The Catapult Network is pleased to announce that Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult, will succeed Andrew Jamieson, Chief Executive of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, as Chair of the Network.

In the role of Catapult Network Chair, Jeremy represents the collective mission of the nine Catapults, engaging key stakeholders across business and industry, government, and the research community, to transform the UK’s capability for innovation. Collectively, Catapults are driving programmes which address many of governments broad economic policy objectives: recovery from the pandemic, levelling up, reduction of carbon emissions, modernising health and social care, digital transformation, increasing industrial productivity, food sustainability and skills, translating great science into societal and economic impact.

Jeremy commented: “I am delighted to be the next Chair of the Catapult Network. Andrew Jamieson has created a strong culture of collaboration between the Catapults and our partners in UKRI and BEIS, and helped us all effectively navigate the challenges of the pandemic. As we recover and start to return to growth, the UK is still targeting an increase in R&D investment to 2.4% of GDP; to achieve this more businesses will need to innovate across more sectors, and I believe the Catapults can be a powerful conduit to help achieve that.

“Capitalising on the Catapult Networks links across the innovation ecosystem will enable us to build back better. An increase of industrial investment in research and innovation needs to come from both existing and new sectors. We need to find the early-stage start-ups with high growth potential that might not typically engage in R&D and explore how we can address their needs to enable them to scale. The Catapult Network’s extensive industrial and academic links has a great contribution to make to address this gap but there is still more to be done to create new mechanisms to increase adoption and innovation.”

UKRI Chief Executive, Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser said: “I would like to thank Andrew Jamieson for his leadership as Chair of the Catapult Network over the last year and congratulate Jeremy Silver as he takes on the role.

“The Catapult Network has an important role to play in the UK’s post-pandemic recovery. Bringing together researchers and innovators from across the public and private sectors is vital to our efforts to support a dynamic and vibrant economy in which new ideas, products and services flourish. I look forward to working with Jeremy in the months ahead.”

Jeremy Silver is an entrepreneur, author and angel investor. He is a Trustee of the British Library and a member of the UK Creative Industries Council. Jeremy also sits on the boards of HammerheadVR Ltd, Imaginarium Studios Ltd and FeedForward.AI. He was previously Executive Chairman of Semetric (acquired by Apple), a strategic advisor to Shazam (acquired by Apple), and CEO of Sibelius Software (acquired by Avid). Jeremy was Worldwide Vice-President of New Media for EMI Group in Los Angeles and Head of Media at Virgin Records. He is an Industry Fellow at the University of Glasgow.

About the Catapult Network

The Catapult Network supports businesses in transforming great ideas into valuable products and services. We are a Network of world-leading technology and innovation centres established by Innovate UK. We deliver impact across the UK economy, enabling businesses to thrive in global markets. Since inception the Catapults have collectively played a lead role in delivering over 14,000 industry collaborations, over 5000 academic collaborations and supported over 8,000 innovative SMEs across a wide range of sectors and extended international partnership projects.