BRITEST - Key Persons


Emma Maun - COO

Job Titles:
  • Operations Director
With past experience including looking after the world's most challenging and demanding celebrities during their stays in some of the country's most exclusive hotels, Emma is more than capable of providing the VIP experience that Britest's clients deserve. Whether managing events large and small, or coordinating and working with people from a whole range of nationalities and backgrounds, Emma's focus - learned from the best at Walt Disney World in Florida - is always on delivering fantastic customer service. Describing herself as, "Bossy enough to get the job done efficiently, but friendly enough for others to know that I'm always doing it with a smile!" Emma is never happier than when helping out and working with others. She combines the ability to keep calm in a crisis with a genuine love of people. Emma's role takes in all aspects of administrative and financial support for the Britest team, Board, committees, collaborative projects, and anything else that involves getting the right people to the right place, at the right time, with the right stuff! Emma's organisational skills and tireless commitment to customer satisfaction, acquired in the demanding environment of world class hospitality provision, are put to work ensuring that Britest's events, meetings, and training go without a hitch. If you need it, Emma can sort it.

John Henderson

Job Titles:
  • Technical Communications Specialist
An experienced industrial chemist, consultant and trainer, equally fascinated by people and processes, John brings bring a personable and flexible approach to technical communications within the Britest community, and in support of dissemination and exploitation activities in our collaborative research projects. John brings a strong combination of technical and communications skills to his role at Britest, acquired in a diverse career in industrial R&D, management, training, and knowledge transfer. John holds a 1st Class Honours Degree in Applied Chemistry from the University of Strathclyde, and a PhD in Polymer Science from the University of Durham, and is a Chartered Chemist. After a decade spent managing all aspects of product and process R&D for Chemdal (later BASF) polyacrylate superabsorbents (including international process and product transfer, and technical representation to major clients) John decided to branch out, sharing his enthusiasm for statistical analysis and experimental design in process improvement as a trainer and consultant with S4i Limited, during which time he acquired Six Sigma Master Black Belt status. As a Project Manager with C-Tech Innovation Limited, John gained valuable experience of working in the UK/EU collaborative innovation environment, and played a prominent role in the delivery and community management of the UK's Faraday Partnership and Knowledge Transfer Networks in Resource Efficiency and Sustainability. His most treasured social media recommendation described him as having "...a brain the size of a planet, yet the skills of a silver-tongued cavalier," neither of which is exactly true. John works on all aspects of Britest's communications activities including supporting the effective dissemination and deployment of Britest tools and methodologies into user organisations, identifying themes emerging from our key innovation projects and working with colleagues to turn them into dissemination, education and training materials for relevant target audiences, and managing the development and delivery of Britest's strategic communications programme including the Britest website and extranet, newsletters and social media, case studies etc. He is currently work package leader for dissemination and training in the Horizon 2020 MultiCycle project which is developing and demonstrating advanced and sustainable recycling processes for plastic-based multi-materials.

Kirk Malone - Chief Commercial Officer

Job Titles:
  • Commercial Director
Kirk is passionate about innovation and collaborative R&D having spent his career in interdisciplinary science, and business development, at the interface of academia and industry. Kirk joined Britest in May 2023 after a brief secondment from the University of Manchester where he was Director of Commercialisation of the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology and the national EPSRC / BBSRC Future Biomanufacturing Research Hub. Kirk has a PhD in organic chemistry, and extensive experience in interdisciplinary science, project management, and business development at the interface of academia and industry, across multiple sectors. Kirk works with our member organisations, and engages more broadly with companies and academia, to apply Britest's innovation to develop safer, more productive, and sustainable processes.

Rob Peeling

Job Titles:
  • Technical Services Director
With a professional lifetime spent in operations and engineering research management roles, Rob knows all about the realities of driving excellence out on the line. He is ideally qualified to help organisations define, structure and translate process knowledge and information into process understanding. A chemical engineer and Fellow Institution of Chemical Engineers, with a professional lifetime spent in design, operations and engineering research management roles, Rob knows all about the realities and pressures of driving excellence in the process industries. Coming to Britest from a member organisation (he was most recently Engineering Research Manager at the Johnson Matthey Technology Centre, Sonning Common) Rob has first-hand experience of actively using Britest tools and methodologies to create value for process plant operations. In a career which has also taken in spells with Johnson Matthey Vertec, Synetix, and Tioxide UK Limited, Rob has frequently been involved in the development of teams in operations and research which owed their success to the attention given to capturing, exchanging and promoting process understanding. Rob is an experienced process safety practitioner, leading many HAZOPs and other safety risk assessments and working with the regulatory authorities. He is thoroughly familiar with assessing the technical risk of introducing new processes and technologies. He also has extensive practical experience of project management in large, multidisciplinary, multinational projects and recruiting and developing teams of engineers and scientists. Rob applies the same innate curiosity for all things scientific, astronomical and engineering that once took him a kilometre under North Yorkshire to the UK Dark Matter Research lab (housed deep within Boulby Potash mine) to developments in technical, safety and supply value chains risk assessments and other collaborative projects as part of Britest's innovation programme. He is also invariably busy developing tools and methodologies and finding new potential clients and collaborators.