Director, Cambridge Central Asia Forum, Jesus College, University of Cambridge; Principal Research Associate, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Dr Siddharth Shanker Saxena trained as an anthropologist, historian and a physicist. He focuses on Innovation and Technology Transfer, knowledge systems, social and political development, and institutional history in Central and Asia and the Middle East.

He has been invited to speak on a range of topics at the Beijing Forum, Moscow Economic Forum, St Petersburg Economic Congress, Astana Economic Forum, Kazakhstan, Baku Forum, Azerbaijan, Samarkand and Tashkent Forums in Uzbekistan, Caspian Forum, Istanbul, Turkey, Caspian Corridors Meeting, London, Eurasia Conference, Tajikistan, UK-Kazakhstan and UK-Uzbekistan Trade and Industry Council Forums, as well as numerous academic and analytical meetings on innovation, geoeconomics, physics, technology and science, industrial, education and knowledge economy policy.

He was born in Lucknow, India, in 1971, and studied in Britain, France, Germany, the Soviet Union and Switzerland. He completed high school from New Orleans and proceeded to study physics and the history at the University New Orleans. He then came to Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, on a Commonwealth Trust-Trinity Scholarship, to study for a Ph.D. at the Cavendish Laboratory. He did post-doctoral research at University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and the University College London, followed by election to a Research Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge. He also Directed of Centre for Materials and Microsystems in Trento, Italy, and was the General Director of the Centre of High Technologies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

He has been involved in field-based research in Central Asia since the early 1990s, with a focus on Bukhara and the Ferghana Valley. Since 2002, he has also been working in Afghanistan, Almaty and Astana in Kazakhstan and Kashgar in China. His historical and anthropological research is done in conjunction with policy-related projects.

He also works on superconductors, magnets, graphite and renewable energy applications related to rare-earth metals and oxides. He has discovered four new superconductors, including the first ferromagnetic superconductor.

Dr Saxena is consulted frequently by international organisations, and guides a number of institutional development projects in Central Asia.