Chris is a Fellow of the IChemE and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2019. He is the co-founder and lead advisor at HancockHamlin, working in the fields of digital transformation, sustainability and the intersection of the two.

Prior to founding his own company, Chris worked for Emerson as the EMEA consulting business leader with global domain leadership for production optimisation and sustainability. The early part of his career comprised nearly 20 years in various roles in petrochemicals and plastics manufacturing, working for companies including ICI, Huntsman and Sabic.

Outside of his core role, he is vice-chair of the IChemE’s Process Management and Control SIG with specific responsibility for organising the UK’s Advances in Process Automation and Control conference series. He is also a member of the IChemE Digitalisation TAG, a workstream leader for the InstMC’s Digital Transformation SIG and co-chair of the Partnership for Automation and Control Teaching (PACT).

Chris’ first degrees are in chemical engineering from Cambridge, and he also has an MBA from Durham Business School which fostered a research interest in the application of complexity theory to innovation and the behaviour of economic systems as a Visiting Fellow. He lives in Northumberland, close to Hadrian’s Wall, with his wife, Penny, and son Seth where he enjoys road and gravel cycling and manages to play the occasional game of touch rugby.