Dr Mark Bacon
Faculty Director: Business Partnerships & Enterprise
Mark took up the role of Faculty Director for Business Partnerships & Enterprise in May 2011, having previously led the business engagement team in the Lancaster Environment Centre since 2001.
The role of Faculty Director takes responsibility for the development, direction and delivery of a business partnerships and enterprise strategy for science and technology at Lancaster University. This strategy is delivered by a staff team of over 30 full-time roles. Via the development of a number of key themes, the strategy places significant focus on the development of collaborative research partnerships with business and other science and technology users and the use of partnerships to provide undergraduate and postgraduate students with the opportunity to work with potential future employers. The strategy also oversees the commercialisation of IP, the development and provision of professional training programmes and the use of dedicated facilities for the co-location of businesses onto the Lancaster campus, in both InfoLab21, the home of the School of Computing and Communications and the Lancaster Environment Centre.
Mark also currently leads the business development group for the Cockcroft Institute for Accelerator Science and Technology, based at the Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus.
As well at taking a strategic lead, Mark continues to develop and lead a range of collaborative partnerships with business and other universities and research institutes, including the North West Eco-innovation programme, part funded by the European Regional Development fund (£3.4M) and the Knowledge Acceleration and Responsible Innovation Meta-network (KARIM) a £7.7M project funded by the European Commission’s Interreg IVB programme.
Mark has a first class honours degree (1995) and PhD (1998) in Biological Sciences from Lancaster University, is a board director of Lancaster University Business Enterprises Limited (LUBEL), and a former non-executive director of Envirolink Northwest Ltd.
In 2004 Mark was awarded a staff prize for commercialisation, in recognition of his development of outreach activities from the Lancaster Environment Centre and co-authored Lancaster’s submission for the successful award of a Queen’s Prize for Higher Education in 2010 to Lancaster University.