Professor Paul Egglestone is the Founder and Director of FASTLab (Future Arts, Science and Technology Laboratory) and the Lead CI—Professor of Creative Industries in the College of Human and Social Futures at the University of Newcastle.

His work bringing together makers, communities and technology spans almost two decades and is recognised nationally and internationally. He set up FASTLab in 2018 as a translational research hub to deliver transformational research with global impact, connecting businesses, NGOs and government to demonstrate how we can create value through creativity and innovation, balancing sustainable economic growth with social and environmental developments.

Within the lab, his research focuses on human-centred interactions. It harnesses human imagination, empathy, cooperation, co-design, design thinking, visualisation, playfulness and creativity to enable a better understanding of the underlying systems of creativity, and motivations of humans. This iterative approach is designed to take speculative ideas into a Beta to Alpha development process and onto commercialisation opportunities.

Professor Egglestone is a founding member of the Global Alliance for Media Innovation and formerly founder of the Media Innovation Studio at the University of Central Lancashire, working extensively with large media organisations like the BBC, Haymarket, The Guardian, The Independent, ITV and Google.