7 October 2026
PNDC is pleased to announce that Dan Cutting has been appointed Commercial Director, stepping up from his role as Head of Business Development to join the centre’s Senior Leadership Team.
In his new role, Dan will lead PNDC’s commercial strategy and industry engagement across both of our facilities at Wardpark and the Advanced Net Zero Innovation Centre (ANZIC). His focus will be on developing long-term strategic partnerships with industry, growing PNDC’s commercial activity and connecting organisations with the specialist facilities, technical expertise and wider University of Strathclyde capability needed to accelerate innovation towards deployment.
It’s a role Dan is well placed to step into. Since joining the University in 2021, he has held business development and leadership roles focused on building industry partnerships and developing opportunities around emerging industry needs. His early work centred on electrification technologies and associated supply chains, particularly across the transport sector. In 2024, Dan became PNDC’s Head of Business Development, broadening his remit across power networks, heat decarbonisation and transport decarbonisation and working with major network operators, industry and government to shape innovation programmes and develop new PNDC capabilities.
Dan began his career at Rolls-Royce, where he spent over five years in engineering and commercial roles across future aerospace programmes and aftermarket operations. A University of Strathclyde graduate in Aero-Mechanical Engineering, Dan is currently completing an Executive MBA at Strathclyde Business School.
As we expand our activity and increase our engagement in national and international markets, strong commercial leadership is critical. Dan has the credibility, experience and strategic perspective to build lasting partnerships, unlock new opportunities and ensure our innovation delivers real-world impact at scale.
Dan has been instrumental in strengthening PNDC’s commercial pipeline, building strategic industry partnerships and shaping the growth of our capability. He combines strong engineering expertise with commercial insight and a deep understanding of our partners’ challenges and opportunities.
I am delighted to welcome him to the Senior Leadership Team and look forward to working with him as we continue to grow PNDC’s reach, influence and impact.
I’m delighted to take on the role of Commercial Director at such an exciting point for PNDC. One of our greatest strengths is the team we have here, combining deep technical expertise with a real understanding of the challenges facing industry. That is strengthened further by the breadth of expertise and capability across the University of Strathclyde.
My focus will be on building strong, long-term partnerships with industry and bringing together the right people, facilities and expertise to help our partners solve difficult challenges, de-risk new technologies and move towards deployment with greater confidence.
About PNDC
The Power Networks Demonstration Centre (PNDC) is one of the University of Strathclyde’s flagship industry-facing innovation centres. It gives industry partners a real-world environment to test, validate and de-risk new technologies before they reach live networks, bridging the gap between concept and commercial deployment.
Working across power networks, transport, heat and whole energy systems, PNDC brings together industry, government and academia to speed up innovation and support the transition to a net zero economy.