Imperial academic co-chairs World Economic Forum in China

Imperial's Dr Enass Abo-Hamed

Imperial engineer Dr Enass Abo-Hamed co-chaired the World Economic Forum in China this week.

Dr Abo-Hamed, a Royal Academy Enterprise Fellow from the Department of Earth Science, played a vital role in shaping the agenda of the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian.

The theme of this year’s meeting is ‘Leadership 4.0: Succeeding in a New Era of Globalization’. Participants will discuss ways to achieve sustainable, inclusive growth in a global economy that is being disrupted by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a changing geopolitical landscape, climate change and rising inequality.

David Gann, Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at the Business School, was also attending the conference to speak at the session ‘The Evolution of Executive Leadership’.

Professor Gann recently wrote for the World Economic Forum’s Agenda on Deep Science. Professor Gann said: “Deep science is an international collaborative activity…[to support it] scale is essential, and the investment and skills needed often exceed the ability of individual nations to provide them.”

Dr Abo-Hamed is the founder and CEO of start-up H2GO Power which aims to provide safe and low-cost hydrogen energy to increase access to a zero-emission and reliable power supply for millions across the world.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Dr Abo-Hamed said: “I represent the young scientist community of the World Economic Forum.

“My suggestion is to look and build for leaders who can think like scientists and act like entrepreneurs.” Dr Enass Abo-Hamed

“It's an exceptional community in terms of the nature of its members. They all go into the lab and do the type of research that will really solve the critical problems that we face such as climate change, obesity, curing cancers and mental health, and many other problems.

“We really need to turn to the scientific community and bring more scientists to the decision making table to solve our problems.

“My message for this meeting is to look for a new type of leaders, a new breed of leaders that we don’t have many examples as of today for.

“That is because my generation have inherited critical problems like climate change, water shortages, migration and immigrant crisis, all these problems we have to solve and they haven’t been solved yet.

“My suggestion is to look and build for leaders who can think like scientists and act like entrepreneurs.”

Dr Abo-Hamed recently received the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 Europe award for Visionary of the Year, and is a member of the Global Future Council on Advancing Energy Technologies.

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Photographs: Copyright World Economic Forum