David Allan Feller

Higher Education Research Specialist

For the past nine years, I have been engaged in creating partnerships between higher education researchers and the private, commercial, and public sectors. My arrival in this role was not intentional but rather the result of a combination of my prior career as a commercial attorney in the United States, followed by a return to academia, where I earned two advanced degrees in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge. After 20 years at Cambridge—where I have been a student, lecturer, and administrator—I have developed a unique approach to enabling higher education research and making the results of that research available to commercial and public interests for real-world applications.

After graduating from Georgetown University Law Center (with honors, including an outstanding graduate research paper and a U.S. Federal District Court clerkship), I joined one of the U.S.’s oldest law firms in Honolulu, Hawaii, practicing corporate law as a trial lawyer and representing stakeholders such as Ford Motor Co., Hitachi, Samsung, and Hewlett-Packard. Eager to engage with new challenges, I returned to academic pursuits in 2002, and in 2005, I received an invitation to study the History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Over the next five years, I earned an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Cambridge, with my doctoral thesis focusing on the history of biology and the cultural foundations of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. I subsequently received a prestigious research fellowship from Cambridge’s Darwin College, followed by another postdoctoral research position at the University of Manchester, where I taught topics in the History and Philosophy of Science, Law and Science, and published on technical subjects in the field.

Combining those two careers into a third, in 2016, I joined the Cambridge Research Operations Office as the Senior Contracts Manager for the School of Physical Sciences, successfully creating and negotiating bespoke funding agreements for the Schools of Physical Science, Technology, Clinical Science, and Biological Sciences. Sitting as the gatekeeper between university innovation and the companies, agencies, and businesses that would apply such discoveries, I applied my commercial and legal acumen to create and deliver profitable new funding projects that expanded the ways in which Cambridge research could engage in sustainable, high-impact programs. Multi-million-dollar/GBP interdisciplinary research centers that I designed and negotiated include the Cambridge Centre for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (DAMTP and Clinical Science), the Cambridge Data Science Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (Physics and across schools, now housed in DAMTP), the Faraday Battery Challenge (EPSRC, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering), and the Nuclear Submarine Training Programme (MOD, Frazer-Nash, Engineering, Earth Sciences). In addition, I created bespoke funding agreements for the Schools of Physical Science, Technology, Clinical Science, and Biological Sciences, funded by research councils such as the EPSRC as well as commercial sponsors, working with PIs in a wide range of specialties to deliver their research via successful sponsorships.

Much of my success in designing such funding projects is due to my ability to present kinetic ideas and absorb the interests of new stakeholders in discussions. My varied careers have given me the skills to engage with key stakeholders from diverse backgrounds, cultivate relationships, set reasonable priorities and goals, and promote cross-functional collaboration. For Cambridge, I have championed our interests in front of Whitehall and the MOD, as well as large funders such as GSK, Shell Oil, and Aviva Insurance. My strong ability to understand stakeholders’ motives and goals has enabled me to align them with university objectives and requirements.

From inside the higher education landscape, it’s not always easy to see how to link discoveries with practical applications and commercial exploitation. My academic career allows me to work with researchers to understand their work and goals, while my extensive technical and commercial experience enables me to help parties outside the academic world participate in and benefit from that research.