Innovate UK, the Swindon-based public body promoting innovation, has appointed Dr David Grant CBE as interim chief executive.
Dr Grant replaces Iain Gray, who left on December 31 after seven years at the helm of the organisation, which is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills. Innovate UK was set up as the Technology Strategy Board in 2007 and is based at North Star. 
Dr Grant, a member of Innovate UK’s governing board from 2007 to 2014, is chairman of STEMNET, the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Network that creates opportunities to inspire young people in STEM subjects.
He is a senior independent director at Gloucestershire-based precision engineering group Renishaw and IQE, the Cardiff-based specialist semiconductor firm and a non-executive director of the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl).
Most of his career has been in leadership roles in the electronics and electrical engineering industry and between 2001 and 2012 he was vice-chancellor of Cardiff University
