Prof Lavery is a Full Professor and leader of the Structured Photonics Research Group at the University of Glasgow (UofG). His dynamic research group has a track record in investigating fundamental developments in Physics and successfully applying them to industry inspired engineering challenges. Since joining the School of Engineering in September 2014, he has successfully attracted over £5m in research funding as Principle Investigator (PI) and is coordinator of the H2020 Future and Emerging Technologies (FET-Open) consortium project named SuperPixels. He has been recognised as a leader in the academic community, having been awarded the 2013 Scopus Young Scientist of the Year for Physical Sciences. In 2018, he became the Mobile World Scholar Gold Medal winner for his accomplishments in high dimensional optical communications. For his contributions to the field of optics he was further awarded the 2019 Royal Academy of Edinburgh Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane Medal. He has led a team of world-leading researchers to develop a road map for deploying highspeed network provision for developing countries (Lavery et. al, N. Photon. 12(5), 249-252, 2018) supported by the EPSRC Global Challenges Research Fund.