The UNIGIS board of directors has decided to award the distinction of “UNIGIS Fellow” to Dr Ian Heywood – congratulations!
Ian had been involved in key capacities with UNIGIS UK (Manchester) and UNIGIS International since its inception, and always played an important role as an innovator contributing many key concepts and strategies to the development of this still-unique international network of universities dedicated to online distance learning in Geoinformatics.
While he is still recognized in the GIS community for his well established introductory textbook, he since has moved on to fields like innovation and entrepreneurship, and ‘up’ to the more alpine environments of Scotland.
Ian is currently the Knowledge Transfer Adviser for the North of Scotland, responsible for developing and managing a portfolio of successful Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) between businesses and academia. The KTP programme promotes business led, open innovation by connecting companies with academic expertise to enable them to grow their business (see https://ktn-uk.co.uk). Ian also holds an honorary position in the University of Aberdeen Business School (https://www.abdn.ac.uk/business/) and is a founding member of Coneeect EU (http://www.coneeect.eu), a collaboration of European Universities involved in championing entrepreneurship education.
When not out promoting innovation links between companies and universities. Ian can be found using GI technology to tackle his exploits in the mountains and keep him safe (see https://www.facebook.com/TheUnintentionalUltraRunner/).
These days, Ian Heywood collaborates with several UNIGIS partners on developing and delivering learning experiences on ‘Geo-Entrepreneurship’, enhancing the connections between academic education and business practice. We all are looking forward to the results of this initiative, and maybe even a few more startup companies!
If you want to find out more about Ian – or re-connect – go to https://www.linkedin.com/in/drianhey/