Our Team
Anthony Ashbrook
Co-founder and CEO
Anthony has overall responsibility for the company and leads the commercialisation, funding and IP activities. Anthony is a Company Director and on the board.
Anthony has 18 years of start-up experience founding two companies and being the technology lead at three others. Of his previous companies, one was a joint venture and exited to the larger corporate partner, one is currently in an exit process with multiple interested buyers, another is successful company in the film and video games industry based in Los Angeles and one failed.
Charlotte Fries
Mapping Technician
Charlotte is responsible for processing position data from the sensors in order to expand our maps and keep them up-to-date. She is working on refining the mapping process for performance and efficiency.
Charlotte joined MWV shortly after completing her Bachelors degree in Astrophysics from the University of St Andrews.
Danni Tarrant
Software Engineer
Danni is a software engineer focused on supporting the development and improvement of software. He is working on ways to improve reliability and performance of existing services.
Danni has a Masters in GIS from Edinburgh University and has worked in Education and Local Government developing a range of different software solutions to meet customer needs.
Fiona Davies
Software Engineer
Fiona is a software engineer maintaining and developing the software stack. She is working on the optimisation of processes and services.
Fiona has a Masters in Mathematics from Durham University and started her software career working on telecommunications products at Microsoft.
Fiona MacPherson
Business and Executive Support Officer
With a background in the software industry, Fiona's communication skills and pragmatic approach to problem-solving serves as a useful bridge between business and technical domains.
Primarily responsible for the non-technical and non-commercial aspects of the business, Fiona is tasked with ensuring the smooth running of the office and company. Other key responsibilities include implementing the necessary tools and processes to support the Company's plans for growth and establishing continued compliance in the areas of data security and net zero targets.
Giulia Chironna
Business Development Manager
Giulia is responsible for building and maintaining strong relationships with new and existing customers. She is involved in the initial proposal process of new opportunities.
Giulia has a degree in Forensic Science from Nottingham Trent University and then moved into the sales industry to pursue her career in Business Development.
Graeme Stewart
Data Scientist
Graeme is the company’s researcher focussing on data science. He is developing ways to best utilise
the data to produce useful insights.
Graeme has a PhD in Detector Physics from the Universtity of Glasgow. He has previously worked
in radar algorithm design and testing as well as in data science for the telecommunications industry.
Jan Wessnitzer
Co-founder and Innovation Lead
Jan has overall responsibility for the company’s research activities and has managed the development of much of MWV’s underlying algorithms and technology. Jan is leading the development of the condition mapping and analytics software and algorithms. Jan sits on the Management Team.
Jan is an expert in AI and Robotics with both academic and commercial research experience. Prior to co-founding Machines With Vision, he worked for an AI start-up and on autonomous systems for the submersible robotics company SeeByte.
John Dale
Senior Research Engineer
John is one of the company's main researchers, working across all areas of research. John has helped develop much of the company’s positioning technology. He is developing new algorithms, understanding their performance and keeping up to date with all current global research developments.
John holds a PhD in Accelerator and Particle Physics from the University of Oxford. Before moving into industrial research he worked in academia in the areas of Linear Partical Accelerators (University of Oxford), Metrology (Oxford and NPL) and Plasma Wakefield Accelerators (DESY Hamburg Germany). Prior to joining Machines With Vision he worked in a startup developing automated 3D modeling algorithms in Berlin.
Jon Owen
CTO
Jon acts as the connection between the ongoing customer project delivery in the field and our core product development back at base.
Jon has over 20 years experience in the Railway technology industry, with a focus on positioning, survey and the integration and analysis of track measurement systems, he has also had extensive input into the mapping of the UK railway.
Jon has a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Manchester, specialising in Computational Fluid Dynamics.
Kerr Bailey
Junior DevOps Engineer
Kerr is a DevOps engineer focused on managing and developing our cloud infrastructure. Responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and security of our systems. He is currently working to optimise our cloud-based operations.
Prior to working at MWV, Kerr was completing his bachelor's degree in Computer science, and has previously worked in platform engineering
Morris Antonello
Vision and Machine Learning Engineer
Morris is responsible for enhancing MWV's computer vision and machine learning technologies. He focuses on developing new models and algorithms, ensuring their robustness and optimising their runtime for deployment.
Morris holds a PhD in Information Science and Engineering from the University of Padova, specialising in semantic segmentation and mapping for robotics. Prior to joining MWV, he worked as lead research engineer at Five AI and Bosch, where he developed perception, motion prediction and planning algorithms for automated driving systems.
Nicola Harkness
Marketing & Communications Strategy
Nicola is responsible for the marketing and communications strategy and its implementation for the Company.
Originally from a technical background, Nicola has covered all facets of B2B marketing during the last 20 years. Following extended periods with Bluechip and FTSE 100 companies, Nicola has more recently been working with technology start-ups and small companies.
Shona Martin
Sensor Engineer
Shona is responsible for the hardware aspect of the product, she is heavily involved in the design and production of the sensor systems.
Shona has a Masters degree in Robotics and Cybertronics from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh. She has previously gained significant experience designing bespoke equipment for the live entertainment industry.
Sophie Cole
Systems Engineering Lead
Sophie is responsible for the deployment and maintenance of the MWV hardware and software in the field, making sure the systems are robust to the environment and continuously reliable.
Sophie has a Masters degree in Engineering from the University of Glasgow. She has previously worked in robotics development and in industrial survey and inspection.
Wei Deng
Senior Software Engineer
Wei is responsible for software development, transforming research prototype code to real-time embedded software by using the latest GPU technology. Wei developed the real-time embedded software of the company’s positioning sensor.
Wei holds a PhD in Computer vision and worked as a university researcher for several years before moving towards a professional software development career. He worked for a commercial engineering software company as senior developer for a decade, and then for a video gaming company focusing on 3D graphics.