Panel of Experts

Dave Stevens

Dave Stevens qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG and moved into industry 20 years ago this year. Most of his industrial experience has been in the ICT sector. Dave founded two VC backed technology start-ups - Eden Group (with Alistair Jenkins), a pioneer of PDAs; and Sensei, a mobile phone handset developer. Both businesses grew from zero to 40+ employees and both achieved $30m+ exit valuations, via trade sales. Dave was also one of the founders of Symbian, the Psion, Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, Matsushita joint venture.

Dave has been working in the North East since 2003 as Head of Commercial Development for Codeworks, an economic development company. Most recently, Dave has been working with CELS, another regional economic development company and leading academics at Newcastle University on the Ageing & Vitality theme of Newcastle Science City, a £150m regeneration programme.

Dave holds a BA in Economics from Leeds University and an MBA from Henley Management College.

Dr Louise Robinson

Louise Robinson is Senior Lecturer in Primary Care with the Ageing and Dementia Research Group, at the Institute of Health and Society, Newcastle University. She has been an academic General Practitioner for 12 years and earned her MD from Newcastle University in 1999. She is also a member of the Institute of Ageing and Health. Her research is focused on the mental health of older people, especially dementia, and the promotion of healthy ageing. She has considerable experience of multidisciplinary research projects in dementia care, including the management of wandering. She is part of the project team for the Newcastle, MRC funded, 85 plus study and part of the Newcastle group of the MRC funded Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (CFAS). Her individual research expertise is largely in qualitative research and systematic review methodology. She has published over 30 journal articles and secured research funding from NHS HTA, Department of Health Policy and Research Programme and the BUPA Foundation. She has recently co-authored the chapter on mental health for older people in primary care for the Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry.

Julian C Hughes

Julian C Hughes is a consultant in old age psychiatry at North Tyneside General Hospital. He is also an honorary senior lecturer in the Institute for Ageing and Health at Newcastle University. His research interests are in the fields of philosophy and ethics in connection with dementia and ageing. He has a particular interest in palliative care and edited Palliative Care in Severe Dementia (Quay Books, 2006). He has also co-edited (with Stephen Louw and Steven Sabat) Dementia: Mind, Meaning, and the Person (Oxford University Press, 2006). He was involved in research based at Ethox, funded by the Alzheimer's Society, which led to the book Making Difficult Decisions: the Experience of Caring for Someone with Dementia (Alzheimer's Society, 2005). The main author was Clive Baldwin. More recently Julian has co-authored with Clive a book entitled Ethical Issues in Dementia Care: Making Difficult Decisions (Jessica Kingsley, 2006).

Patrick Olivier

The focus of most of my work is on interaction with computers in everyday settings. My goal is to use computers to improve our quality of life and make our lives more meaningful. With the development of sensing and pervasive computing technologies I am particularly interested in how these can be used to provide ambient assisted living for older people. That means overcoming the technology driven approaches that have dominated past efforts to create technology for older people and their carers. I am currently engaged in a number of projects that aim to produce solutions that are both assistive and meaningful (in the broadest possible senses). To date that means that our projects involve people from a wide range of backgrounds: clinicians, psychologists, technologists, designers, artists, and most importantly, regular people.

Daniel Collerton

I am a Consultant ClinicalPsychologist with Northumberland, Tyne and Wear Trust with honorary positions (very humble ones) at the University of Newcastle and the Newcastle Centre for Cognitive and Behavioural Therapies. I work in Gateshead where I lead the Psychology service to older people and I am also Treasurer of the Gateshead Branch of the Alzheimer's Society. My interests lie in understanding and changing the emotional impact of dementia and other illnesses in later life, and in linking basic research with practical improvements in services.

Professor Charlotte L. Clarke

Professor Clarke's research has covered a range of health and social care issues, with a particular focus on older people and dementia care. At present, she leads the British Academy funded International Collaborative Research Network on Risk in Ageing Populations, which has projects running in South Africa, India, Australia, USA and UK. She is also interested in the role that Universities can play in developing the health and well-being of communities, and has established frameworks for partnership working such as Community Campus which works closely with the voluntary and community sector.