Stewart Miller

Stewart Miller started his career as a design engineer working on fast jets but the interest began earlier.

As a teenager, a BBC Horizon documentary called Chips With Everything introduced him to the possibilities of microprocessors, and helped set the direction for a career spanning engineering, technology and innovation.

For more than two decades, Miller worked across aerospace and defence, moving from engineering into senior leadership at organisations including BAE Systems and Leonardo, before changing tact.

As Chief Technology Officer at Innovate UK, Miller was no longer looking at innovation from inside one company or sector. He had a view across British research and development, and became increasingly interested in the distance between what technology could do and where it was actually being adopted.

In 2021, he became the first CEO of the National Robotarium.

The institution was built around that gap. Based at Heriot-Watt University, it brings researchers and businesses together to develop, test and deploy robotics in real-world settings, from manufacturing and offshore energy to healthcare and hazardous environments.

Miller’s argument has never been that robots should replace people. It is that they can add capacity where people are scarce, take on work that is dangerous or difficult, and help organisations do things that otherwise would not get done.

The challenge, as he sees it, is often not whether the technology exists. It is whether the people making decisions have seen enough of it to understand where it could help.

Miller began his career designing technology. He increasingly found himself designing the conditions that allow technology to leave the lab.