Designing for Your Future Self: The Future of Inclusive Technology

Colum is a senior design leader with a significant track record of developing inclusive products and services in the private, public and charitable sectors. In 2020 Colum joined the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art as Director for Design Age Institute. He has been Head of Design at the Ministry of Justice, Sainsbury’s, Homebase and the NHS National Patient Safety Agency, and has run design firms Crabtree Hall, CaulderMoore as well as his own consultancy.

Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art's Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Dr Gerard specialises in interdisciplinary design-computing research focusing on designing digital cultures for preferable technology futures and inclusive design for equity in emerging technologies for all ages and abilities. This involves exploring themes in digital materiality, resistance to digitisation, and cyborg post-humanism. He gained his B/MEng in Computing, and PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, from Imperial College London.

Rebecca is the co-founder of Vira Health, a company focused on extending healthy life expectancy for women. Their first product is Stella, supporting women to manage the symptoms of menopause with personalised treatment plans and expert care. Rebecca earned her PhD in epidemiology from Cambridge where she studied socioeconomic inequalities in obesity across global contexts. Prior to founding Vira Health, she worked as a health consultant for the WHO, UNICEF and the Mayor of London.

In her role as Community Lead for the Design Age Institute, George launched This Age Thing in 2021 to build a diverse community of age activists, storytellers, creatives, designers and change-makers. A respected disrupter, innovator, and leader with 25+ years of experience, George is Director of the design studio This is Real Art, co-founder of The Age of No Retirement and specialist consultancy The Common Land, championing cross-generational thinking as a key for social and economic impact.

Julia is the Design Innovation Lead on Innovate UK's Healthy Ageing Challenge. Julia’s career began as a software engineer in the investment banking sector and was a VP before specialising in humanitarian engineering and design innovation for people with cognitive impairment. A member of the Institute for Electrical & Electronics Engineers and is close to completing an MSc in Artificial Intelligence focused on machine learning design to help people with dementia.

Phil is Editor-in-Chief of www.Longevity.Technology and founder of First Longevity, a digital investment platform for international investors and longevity start-ups. In his career he has held c-level management positions; applying his marketing and business development expertise into: longevity, IoT, AI, medical devices, biopharma, 3D manufacturing, smartgrid and sustainability. In 2018 Phil expanded into the emerging longevity field to create a media platform addressing science, business and investment.

The Design Age Institute is the UK’s national strategic unit for design and the healthy ageing economy. The Institute works with designers, businesses, researchers and communities to help address the challenges and opportunities of an ageing society through the transformative power of design.