Professor Juergen Maier

Juergen Maier is Chair of the Digital Catapult, founded and co-Chairs Made Smarter and is Vice-Chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership where he supports the drive for the green re-industrialisation of the North of England. He advises tech start-up and scale-up businesses which are a key part of the industrial ecosystem creating the green 4th Industrial revolution. In that capacity Juergen advises the Welsh hydrogen car company Riversimple.

Juergen is the former Chief Executive of Siemens UK. A position he held from July 2014 to December 2019. Over his 33 year career with Siemens he held a number of senior roles within Siemens in the UK and Germany.

Juergen joined Siemens in 1986 as a graduate engineer with a BSc in production engineering from Nottingham Trent University, on a Siemens-sponsored graduate programme. He was made an honorary professor of Engineering at the University of Manchester in March 2014 and became a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in September 2017. Juergen has also received honorary doctorates for his services to UK Science and Engineering from the Universities of Lincoln, Nottingham Trent, Salford Manchester, Cranfield, Sheffield and Manchester Metropolitan who also made him an honorary Professor in 2019. Juergen was awarded a Fellowship of the City & Guilds Institute in 2020, in recognition of skills development support for technical apprenticeships and workplace upskilling for 4th Industrial Revolution technologies.

He was awarded a CBE in the New Years honours list 2019.

Juergen takes a strong leadership role for UK’s industrial and manufacturing community. He is a passionate advocate for a new post-covid politics and economics; one that provides much stronger leadership and support for innovation led, high productivity ‘frontier industries’. In 2017 he was asked by the Government to lead a review into how to increase the digitalization of the UK manufacturing sector. The subsequent report led to the creation of the joint industry/government ‘Made Smarter’ initiative, which Juergen co-chairs with the BEIS Secretary of State.