Dave is a Research Chemist by discipline, having started his career in the Analytical laboratories at the glass research centre BGIRA. He later moved into research and ultimately management, becoming Technical Director and heading R&D at the UK's Glass Research Centre, where he have spent most of his working life. In 2009, he was appointed CEO of the combined trade federation for the UK glass sector and its technical centre for R&D, Glass Technology Services (GTS). He has both participated in, and led numerous research and development projects at local, national and international level, and more recently, represented glass manufacture and its supply chain at both UK and EU level, helping to educate governments and policymakers in the issues impacting glass manufacture, trade, education and research. I was instrumental in the founding of Glass Futures, a global scale project supported by UK government and industry to build a demonstration platform to allow the transition of technical developments into industrial reality and worked closely with Innovate UK in developing the model and the funding for the whole 'Foundation Industries Challenge. I have taken a more pragmatic approach to lobbying, working to educate policymakers to find win-win solutions by better understanding each other's perspective and have worked across a diverse spectrum of government committees and taskforces to address challenges from up-skilling to climate change, and from trade tariffs to technology. I sit on numerous boards and trusts and Chair various committees in both UK and Europe. I represent glass on more general materials groups both technically and politically. I am currently Chair of the Energy Intensive Users Group (EIUG) through which I represent the most energy dependent sectors of UK manufacturing including Chemicals, Steel, Paper, Ceramics, Cement and Glass. I am a passionate advocate of 'glass as the material at the centre of our future circular economy' and I strive to improve the general understanding of glass as a material to meet many of society's future needs.