Who to Contact
David Crawford is Head of Business Partnerships from the Research and Enterprise Office. He is a Funding Development Manager and a Business Development Manager for the Science and Engineering Faculty. David has the degrees of BA (Hons) and MSc, plus a PhD in Image Coding, all from Essex, and is a Visiting Professor for the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering. David is also a Director of a small high-tech company, TeamCast of France, which manufactures digital transmission equipment. He is actively involved in various international standards bodies and industry forums, including ETSI and European Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) project work groups. During his career, he has held senior posts with several blue chip companies including British Telecom in the UK and Bell Labs in the USA, where he led a research group on HDTV transmission systems. From 2000 to 2003, David was Director of Technology at Crown Castle UK, and from 2003 to 2005, he was Managing Director of the European Broadcast Business for Harris Corporation. David continues to chair annual conferences for the IET (London) and IBC (Amsterdam).
Gary Williams, the Research and Enterprise Manager for Social Sciences / Law and Management, graduated from the University of Essex with a degree in History. He then completed an MA in War Studies at Kings College London and did a PhD in Politics at the University of Hull. Gary returned to Essex as a Teaching Fellow in the Department of History before becoming a Research Assistant in the Department of Politics at the University of Edinburgh, working on a project about privacy protection in the virtual society. Gary found himself back at Essex again when he was appointed Senior Research Officer at Qualidata (now part of the Data Archive) before moving to the Economic and Social Research Council where he was a Senior Science Manager for seven years before returning, yet again, to Essex. Gary has published several articles and a book – US-Grenada Relations: Revolution and Intervention in the Backyard (2007).
Beate Reinhardt, the Research and Enterprise Manager for Biological Sciences and Psychology, graduated from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, with an MSc in Biology. She then studied for a PhD in Cell Biology jointly at the University of California Irvine (UCI), USA, and the Christian Albrechts University, Kiel, Germany. After spending a short postdoctoral period at UCI studying the molecular basis of morphogenesis using the primitive animal Hydra as a model organism, she took a postdoctoral position at the University of Sheffield, where she studied the role of plant hormones during leaf development. Her first job outside the lab was as information and funding officer at the University of York before moving to the University of Essex.
