Orla Kelly has been in the Knowledge Exchange & Innovation (KE&I) Collaboration Manager post since 2020, a role funded by the Scottish Funding Council to work across all 19 HEIs in Scotland. She facilitates peer connections across the KE landscape, and enables collective engagement with national KE, innovation, and enterprise strategy and policy. Orla holds a variety of committee positions, including Chair of Enterprise Support Group (a subgroup of Universities Scotland Research & Innovation Directors’ Group) and Chair of the KEUK Knowledge Exchange Awards. Through collaborative KE&I funding, Orla enables a number of sector-wide initiatives including the Research to Value programme and the External Experts Fund.

Prior to 2020, Orla worked in a series of technology transfer and business development roles at University of Dundee. She has a PhD in experimental physics (Queen’s University Belfast), was a KTP Associate (University of Bristol) and worked as an R&D Engineer in the high value manufacturing SME in South East England.