Having spent fifteen years as an entrepreneur in the Eastern region, I have always been passionate about supporting the Innovation Economy.

That’s why I was so delighted to visit the New Anglia Cluster as Minister of State for Science, Innovation and Technology last week to meet innovators, entrepreneurs and scientists, including:

• Visiting Freeport East for a roundtable on its role as a facilitator of innovation (focusing on green hydrogen, AI, robotics) and to see first-hand the port’s autonomous vehicles.

• Speaking at the New Anglia LEP’s Connected Innovation Conference at BT’s Adastral Park near Ipswich to highlight the global importance of the New Anglia Agri/Bio/CleanTech Cluster of Innovation.

• Visiting Norwich Research Park to meet researchers, participate in a roundtable and showcase the pioneering work being done in Gut Medicine (Quadram Institute), Genomics (Earlham Institute), Plant Breeding (John Innes Centre and the Sainsbury Laboratory), Biomedical Research (the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital) and Clinical Trials (National Institute for Health and Care Research).

• Visiting the Hethel Engineering Centre to highlight the 60 high-growth start-ups across the Advanced Manufacturing, Materials Science, Automotive, Digital and Space Tech sectors.

• Catching up with the New Anglia LEP team on all things enterprise and innovation across the region.

To learn more about my previous work on innovation, please visit my website here.