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Professor Philip Taylor - Pro Vice-Chancellor at University of Bristol

Professor Taylor, who was appointed as Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise in July 2020, is responsible for shaping Bristol’s research and enterprise activity, ensuring it meets the University’s strategic ambition to be a world-leading research-intensive university making a positive contribution to the key global challenges facing society. He is also responsible for engaging with a wide range of organisations - from funders to corporates and charities - regionally, nationally and internationally, and enhancing an already high-performing research environment at Bristol. Professor Taylor was appointed as a sub-panel member for REF2021 and, since 2020, has been a member of EPSRC Science, Engineering and Technology Board.  

Professor Taylor is an internationally leading researcher and industrial expert in energy systems, who has worked in industry and academia for over 25 years. He joined Newcastle University in 2013 as Dean and Director of the multidisciplinary Institute for Sustainability, and later, became the Head of the School of Engineering. He led the University’s involvement in Newcastle Helix, a city centre quarter which brings together hundreds of researchers, businesses, and progressive homeowners living and working side-by-side and housing four national research centres.

Professor Taylor’s work in industry includes time at GEC Alstom, EPS (UK), Teradyne and Senergy Econnect, where among many achievements he developed diagnostic software for the automotive and aerospace sectors and designed the grid connection for the UK’s first commercial offshore wind farm.

Professor Taylor was the Director, and then Co-Director, of the £20m EPSRC National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI) which ended May 2022. Currently, he is the Leader of the £10m EPSRC Supergen Energy Networks Hub, which brings together industrial and academic partners (including five UK universities) with other energy network stakeholders to gain a deeper understanding of the interactions and interdependencies of energy networks, and researches the challenges of technology, policy, data, markets and risk for energy networks.

In addition to being a Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Professor Taylor is also a non-executive director of Northern Powergrid, an electrical distribution company, which provides power to eight million customers in the North East and Yorkshire. Professor Taylor also serves on the Board of Trustees of the national fuel poverty charity, National Energy Action (NEA), which works to ensure that everyone in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is warm and safe at home.