Tony Harper FREng is the Challenge Director for the Faraday Battery Challenge at UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). In this capacity, he is responsible for the UK Government’s £541m investment in Scientific Research, Business-led Innovation and national scale-up infrastructure for Battery Technology.

Tony has 32 years of experience in automotive product development and was previously the Director of Engineering Research at Jaguar Land Rover.

Tony joined Jaguar as a Graduate Engineer in 1986 with an honours degree in Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College London. He spent his early career developing the first Airbag-based passive safety systems and developing a number of sports car concepts including the first and second generation Jaguar XK8. In the early 1990’s, Tony led Jaguar’s development and use of pioneering Knowledge Based Engineering systems automating sophisticated rule-based Design tasks, something that today is referred to as Artificial Intelligence. In 1999, Tony was appointed as head of Jaguar’s Vehicle Engineering team responsible for Vehicle Concept Design, Aerodynamics and Computer Aided Engineering in particular overseeing the early development of the first all-aluminium Jaguar XJ. After a period of secondment to Ford’s International Operations, Tony joined Jaguar Land Rover’s combined Product Development Operations in 2006 to head up the Research and Advanced Engineering group. In this capacity, Tony was responsible for the identification, development and de-risking of all new technology into JLR products for over 10 years.

Tony is a Fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering, Chartered Engineer, fellow of the IMechE and a member of the Automotive Council Technology Group.