Lunchtime Briefing: Achieving Jet Zero, A Cross-Sector Perspective

Rannia joined the Department for Transport to be the new Director for Aviation and the Director General Civil Aviation for the UK. After two years in that role, she has now moved on to be the Director General for Aviation, Maritime and Security. Over the previous three years Rannia was the Director for Business Growth, leading Government’s policy on entrepreneurs, small businesses, but also new and emerging high growth and technology businesses. She devised and implemented the UK’s first AI strategy and secured a £1bn AI sector deal in a partnership between the private sector, government and academia.  She created and became the first Director for the Office for Artificial Intelligence for Her Majesty’s Government and led the Industrial Strategy Grand Challenge on Artificial Intelligence. Prior to BEIS she led teams in the Cabinet Office, No10 Strategy Unit, and Defra in policy, strategy and commercial roles, including leading the development of more than 100 employee-owned private sector businesses, and was the Co-Founder and Director HMG Shareholder at Crown Hosting Data Centres, a joint venture between UK Government and Ark Data Centres.  Rannia started life as an entrepreneur and later became an Assistant Professor in Economics. She received an OBE for public service in 2016 and is a Carnegie Scholar in Economics and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts. Rannia is married with one daughter, loves to travel, and is a runner, and a “maker” in her spare time.

Maithili joined Rolls-Royce in 2011 and is currently working as the Head of Environmental Technology. In this role, she is accountable for driving the development of a robust, joined up Climate Programme aligned to the Rolls-Royce net zero strategic ambition and lead its delivery by integrating activities across the company. She has spent the majority of her career in the Civil Aerospace business, where she has held a number of engineering management roles supporting civil future demonstrators, new product introduction and in-service programmes. Prior to her current role, she was seconded from Rolls-Royce to the Aerospace Technology Institute to work on the FlyZero project, looking at zero-carbon commercial aircraft. This unique project, which pulled together experts from across the UK aerospace industry, has given her a good understanding of the challenges and opportunities for the aerospace sector to decarbonise. She is passionate about sustainable technologies. She has lived and worked in a number of different countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway and India. In her spare time, she enjoys running, gardening and cooking.      

David joined the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) in 2019 and leads the Whole Aircraft Modelling team. Their objective is to analyse current and future aircraft to understand the ultimate benefit of technology being developed. He was a co-architect of the ATI FlyZero project, and subsequently a Chief Engineer during the delivery phase. FlyZero was a ground-breaking study bringing together over 100 experts to examine the possibility of zero-carbon emission flight. The project produced 25 public reports covering topics including aircraft concepts, sustainability analysis and infrastructure requirements. Prior to joining the ATI, David was Chief of Future Aircraft Concepts at Rolls-Royce plc. In this role he led projects examining technologies such as hybrid-electric aircraft, eVTOLs and boundary layer ingestion propulsion. His previous engineering experience included leading the development programme for the Trent XWB engine which is fitted to the Airbus A350 aircraft. He has 2 children, and in his consequently small amount of spare time likes to play sport and music.