Speakers

Prof. Alan Banks is the Lightweight Strcutures Manager at Ford Motor Company. He started work at Ford in 1983 and leads projects with light-weighting technologies with mass production capability.

He led the Composite Lightweight Automotive Suspension System (CLASS) project, winning the 2018 JEC World Automotive Application Innovation award and the Composite UK Innovation Award winning Composite Hybrid Automotive Suspension System Innovative Structures (CHASSIS) & Electrified Structural Hybrid Automotive Designs for Optimised Weight (eSHADOW) projects. He won the 2024 JEC Sustainability award for the EMPHASIZING Project.

Alan has a First-Class Honours Degree, MSc and PhD from the University of Bradford, is a Fellow and Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Engineering Technology and a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers. He is Chairman of the Board for the Composites UK Trade Association and Chairs the Lightweighting UK Auto Council Strategy Group. He is visiting Professor for the University of Sheffield.