Xavier Potau is a Principal Consultant with 10+ years of experience in policy support and has expertise in the evaluation of public science and innovation policies, with a particular interest in indicator framework design and data analysis methods. Xavier is currently managing the evaluation of the UK Industrial Strategy Challenge fund in Next Generation Services (AI applied to the professional services sector). He recently managed an ex-ante impact assessment for a High-Performance Computing European Partnership for DG RTD, a data-driven assessment of economic performance of LEP areas for the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), an analysis of the Impact of UK-US Research Collaboration for the UKRI USA Office, an Evaluation of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) between EPSRC and STFC, and a project on Regulatory sandboxes and innovation testbeds for the Interamerican Development Bank.  

Xavier has been data manager for several important Technopolis studies, including Technopolis’ work as provider of Analytical Support to the UK Science and Innovation Audits (SIAs) for BEIS, over the 2016-18 period. As part of his analytical work in the UK, Xavier has conducted data mining analyses on data sources like the REF case studies dataset (analysing the Impact of UK-US Research Collaboration for the UKRI USA Office in 2018, and analysing University-Business collaboration as part of the Dowling Review for EPSRC and the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2015) and the UK Gateway to Research (providing text mining and bespoke analytical support to 25 UK Science and Innovation Audits in the 2016-18 period, and running classifications of research grants using machine learning techniques for the Evaluation of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund in Robotics and AI for Extreme Environments for UKRI in 2019).  

Prior to joining Technopolis Group, Xavier worked as Project Technical Coordinator at Generalitat de Catalunya in Spain and spent more than 5 years as a Technology Transfer and Business Development Advisor. Xavier holds a Master’s degree in Industrial Engineering.