Dr Patrick Parkinson

Patrick Parkinson works at the intersection of natural sciences, research strategy and innovation systems. He is a physicist and Associate Professor at the University of Manchester, and Director of Research for Natural Sciences.

He holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships applying machine learning and high-throughput methods to next-generation photonics and optoelectronics. He is also completing an MBA, as a deliberate attempt to understand and challenge the assumptions that run universities, innovation factories, research funding and technology translation.

These lead to questions around: what venture-backed neolabs mean for public research, why the PhD product might be broken, how to value a university like a sovereign-grade asset, and why the mental health crisis in academia is an organisational design failure.

He has led research strategy for one of the UK's top-ranked Physics departments, coached fellowship applicants to a record-breaking Royal Society round, and shapes national infrastructure on the steering committee for the UK National Epitaxy Facility. His research has been published in Nature Photonics, Light: Science and Applications, with over 110 peer-reviewed articles.

He is based in Manchester and has studied and researched with world-leading physicists, chemists, and electronic materials engineers across the full spectrum from fundamental discovery to applied translation. He works at the edge of science, strategy and innovation.