Karen Cham

Professor Karen Cham FRSA is Professor of Digital Transformation Design at the University of Brighton. She is academic lead of Digital Catapult Centre Brighton and their £1.2m ‘5G Brighton’ testbed project, a named part of the UK Governments 5G Strategy, and the first UK 5G testbed off a research site and aimed at SME innovation for 5G Native products and services.

Karen leads ‘Connected Futures’ research and enterprise for the University which includes the themes of Digital Health; Immersive, Virtualisation & Simulation; Complex Systems and Digital Economy, under which Catpult & 5G Brighton sit.

She is also Principal Investigator of the £1.3m European Structural Innovation Fund 'Digital Innovation Value Accelerator' (DRIVA) giving SMEs access to a live proprietorial data feed out of Gatwick Airport, innovation support and funding to release value from data and innovate Next Gen products and services.

She has 25 years experience in User Centred product design and development for Next Gen digital, including products & services; production methods; business, management & migration models & transformational strategies.

She is a UK Govt advisor and an internationally recognised expert in human machine convergence. Clients have included PlayStation, Diesel, ITV, Which?, Top Shop & EY. Her current research concerns cognitive computing and valuable singularities in IoT, robotics and immersive environments.