Staff Profile

Dr Ray Kent is University Dean of Business and Innovation at Newcastle University. His role is to work with colleagues in business, government, the third sector and the University to foster a culture of enterprise, entrepreneurship and innovation in Newcastle and the wider North East. The aim is to deepen and broaden the University's reach and effectiveness through collaboration with strategic partners regionally, nationally and internationally, thereby enhancing its economic impact.

Ray has expertise in UK science and innovation policy, and attracting place-based funding to stimulate private sector investment in jobs and skills. Prior to joining Newcastle, Ray was Chief Operating Officer for The Pandemic Institute in Liverpool (2022-24). This followed six-and-a-half years as Director of the Research & Innovation Office at The Royal Veterinary College (RVC), University of London (2016-22). While in Liverpool, he wrote a successful £2 million proposal for Investment Zone funding from the UK government. At RVC, he led a successful bid to BEIS (now DSIT) for a Science and Innovation Audit of London's Knowledge Quarter (published in 2019); and won £8 million from Research England and industry for The Bloomsbury SET, a four-year translational research programme to combat infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance.

Over the period 2018-21, Ray secured £9.2 million from BEIS to create Centres for Vaccinology and Regenerative Medicine, and Translational Research and Clinical Imaging, respectively, at RVC's Hertfordshire campus. He also supported RVC's successful submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, the Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) 1 and 2, and the Knowledge Exchange Concordat. This led to an overall 23% increase in QR (quality-related) income for RVC between 2017-18 and 2024-25, and the quadrupling (from £0.9 million in 2017-18 to £3.8 million in 2024-25) of its allocation from the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF), thereby raising RVC's profile as a research-intensive, small specialist institution.

Ray is a panel chair / rover for the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College, and a member of the peer review college for the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships scheme. He also sits on the Strategic Investment Fund External Panel for Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.

Prior to embarking on a career in research and innovation management, Ray was a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer in Earth Sciences. Over the period 1991-2002 he authored or co-authored 35 academic papers in igneous petrology, geochemistry and volcanology, resulting in an h-index of 20 (for a selection of these papers, see: orcid.org/0000-0002-5412-0310 and/or ‪Ray Kent‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬).