Professor Sebastian Conran Designer, Design Advocate and ACID Ambassador is an engineer at heart, Sebastian Conran has design in the blood. Sebastian takes a hands-on, down-to-earth approach to all his design projects, and is intimately involved in all aspects and stages throughout the innovation journey, sharing his wealth of experience and manufacturing expertise with the development team. His studio’s designs have received many awards for design & innovation as well as being named on over 50 patents and design patents in various fields. From stacking shelves at Habitat in his teens to founding the Consequential Robotics startup, Sebastian has been focused on understanding how things are made (‘form follows fabrication’) and sold, as well as ingeniously designing innovative, stylish, and satisfying products. Over the past 45 years he has taken over a thousand successful and enduring products through from concept idea to user experience. Sebastian is a strong advocate of design & technology both in education and business: He is Industrial Professor at Warwick Manufacturing Group, a Visiting Professor of Design & Innovation at Bristol Robotics Lab; past Designer in Residence at University of Sheffield Engineering Faculty; past Visiting Professor at Central St. Martins Innovations faculty; taught Furniture at the Royal College of Art. He lectures frequently to students and industry on design & entrepreneurship; a judge for many UK & international design awards including Design Week, Dyson, Red Dot, RSA; has attended UK trade missions to Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul and written several books, articles, and papers on design.