PUBLIC EVENT
This event is free of charge, but registration is required. This event will be broadcast live on LinkedIn, and your unique login details will be emailed to you after registering your place. If you have any questions, please contact Events team at [email protected].
Join our first event in the newly launched series of online talks hosted by Academy President, Sir John Lazar CBE FREng who will be joined by Mark Nicholson from Vivacity and Callum Bick from Transport for West Midlands. Together they will discuss their experience of applying AI to improve road safety in the West Midlands.
Prepare your tricky and tough questions and come along ready to gain insights into how to deliver measurably better outcomes from AI adoption.
Practical AI: Inform series
Series of online discussions, which will provide opportunities to share stories of how AI can deliver benefits for people and places. We will be talking to AI innovators, users and adopters about the reality of adopting AI and what they've learnt from the experience.
Recording notice
Please note this event will be recorded and published on the Royal Academy of Engineering website.
Accessibility
It is very important to the Royal Academy of Engineering that our events are accessible to all. If you have any accessibility requirements, please contact the Events team at your earliest convenience so that necessary arrangements can be made. Contact details: [email protected].
Diversity monitoring form
The Academy is committed to equity, diversity and inclusion and one of our goals is to develop an engineering community fit for the future. To help us achieve this, we would like to collect some basic anonymous data about the event attendees. If you would like to help, please complete the diversity monitoring form by logging into your user account on our website and completing ‘Update my D&I data’.
Sir John Lazar CBE FREng
Sir John is a software engineer and entrepreneur with experience of building and managing successful global businesses. He is Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which aims to help young people realise their full potential through the power of computing and digital technologies. He is also co-founder, General Partner, and a Limited Partner at Enza Capital, which backs founders and teams using technology to solve large and meaningful problems across Africa. He sits on the boards of multiple African technology companies and previously served as the Chair of What3words. He was awarded a CBE for services to engineering in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2016 and was knighted for services to engineering and technology in the His Majesty The King’s New Year Honours List 2025. Sir John was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2011 and chaired the Academy’s Enterprise Committee, which supports startups and scaleups across the UK and globally through the Enterprise Hub. He has also been a member of the Academy’s Education and Skills Committee and played an active role in developing the programme of study for England’s school Computer Science curriculum. Sir John has also been a judge and mentor for the Academy’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which trains and backs early-stage African engineering companies. He has spent many years working on tech-related non-profit initiatives in Africa, especially building “digital blacksmiths” and maker labs. He has been an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor in the UK and Africa, with more than 40 individual pre-seed/seed investments. He graduated from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with an MSc in Computation and a DPhil in History, following an undergraduate degree in Computer Science at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Sir John was elected as President of the Royal Academy of Engineering at its 48th AGM in 2024.