Advisory group

Amy Hurst is an Associate Professor at New York University (NYU) with a joint appointment in the Occupational Therapy Department in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the Technology, Culture and Society Department in the Tandon School of Engineering. She also serves serving as the Director of the Ability Project, an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability and technology. Her work primarily focuses on working closely with end users to understand accessibility challenges and the potential for novel assistive technologies to address them.

Dorothy Jones-Davis is the Chief Impact Officer at KID Museum. As both a pioneering experiential museum and educational makerspace, KID’s mission is to foster the “Mind of a Maker” in youth, empowering the next generation with critical skills to invent the future. With a B.A. in Psychobiology from Wellesley College, and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan, Dorothy has previously held roles at the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, San Francisco. She served as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the National Science Foundation in the Division of Engineering Education and Centers from 2012-2014. Dorothy is a founding member of the BIPOC Makers Collective, co-producer of the National and Capitol Hill Maker Faires, and served on the White House Interagency Working Group on Making. Most recently, she was the Executive Director of the national nonprofit, Nation of Makers.

Brightbox partners with libraries and their communities to co-create community-embedded makerspaces where people can meet role models, access resources and nurture their passions. They share experiences and expertise from working with libraries and grassroots organisations and have created makerspace workshops for over 10,000 people. They believe that creating makerspaces in every community is key to a vision where lived experience is valued and power is not given to individuals but is shared by communities through resources and equitable opportunity. Brightbox is passionate about implementing high quality, long-term change, through makerspace programming and consultation.

Tim is Director of Skills and Education at Lloyd’s Register Foundation, an independent global charity with a unique mission: engineering a safer world. The Foundation enhances the safety of the critical infrastructure that modern society relies upon. It does this by supporting high quality research, accelerating technology to application and through education and public outreach. The Foundation supports a huge diversity of work; from the world’s largest 3-D printed metal structure to the first-ever global study of worry and risk; from providing skills for safety in SE Asia to the safe development of robotics. Tim previously led STEM education and public engagement in science work at the British Council.

The Invention Rooms is a unique space in White City, where the local community and Imperial College come together to collaborate, innovate and make. With cutting edge facilities in a friendly and welcoming environment, they hope to inspire generations of inventors, entrepreneurs and makers from the local area and beyond. Kate manages all the Maker Challenge programmes in the Dangoor Reach Out Makerspace at the Invention Rooms. The Reach Out Makerspace is a state-of-the-art educational facility at Imperial’s White City Campus. It is dedicated to hands-on activities aimed at engaging school children creatively in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects.