The Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

Graham King has 16 years of experience in the automotive industry, and is currently a member of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of the West Indies. Alongside teaching, he is the Coordinator of the Mechanical & Manufacturing Enterprise Research Centre, and in this capacity builds and oversees collaborative projects with industrial, governmental and academic partners.

Dr. King has spent most of his career straddling the gap between industry and academia. His doctoral studies focused on innovatively applying cutting-edge knowledge to improve processes and competitiveness in the automotive industry. His methods helped to ensure the success of modern Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles. Later, Dr. King spent three years working with The University of Warwick on a $110m project to improve the competitiveness of the automotive industry in the Midlands region of the UK, which involved developing and implementing innovative methods for both OEMs and the supply chain. On arriving in Trinidad eight years ago, he had the opportunity to work in automotive aftersales, allowing his career to span the entire motor industry from concept design to service and repair.

Dr. King maintains a keen interest in all things innovation and automotive. He has served as a panellist on the Trinidad & Tobago “idea 2 innovation” competition, and is a member of the Ministry of Planning & Sustainable Development Technical Steering Committee on Innovation. He was chair of a Trinidad & Tobago Bureau of Standards Committee revising Vehicle Emissions standards, and served on the Motor Vehicle Exhaust Emissions Standards Implementation Committee in the Ministry of Transport.

Since taking up a lectureship at The UWI, Dr. King has worked on and supervised research projects in a range of fields, but mainly focused on automotive applications. He was able to support the work of the Emissions Standards Committees through research into local vehicle emissions, and extended that work to consider the possibilities for alternative fuel vehicles. He is also interested in renewable energy, participating in the EDULINK/ACP funded CAP4Inno project with partners from Alicante University (Spain), Chalmers University (Sweden), UTEC (Jamaica) and INTEC (DR). Dr. King is contributing to developing the national/regional innovation ecosystem, recently by spearheading a Foresighting programme for the Energy Services Sector. As Global Director of Global Leadership Interlink, a professional network of values-based leaders with Chapters in 27 countries around the world, Dr. King oversees the mentoring and development future leaders. In this capacity he speaks regularly at conferences, seminars and training workshops around the world. He is also a member of the Executive Team of Congress WBN, a global, faith-based, not-for-profit with operations in 85 countries around the world and probably one of the most innovative entities to emerge from Trinidad & Tobago.

Now permanently residing in Trinidad & Tobago, Dr. King graduated from Loughborough University with a First-Class Honours degree in Automotive Engineering and from The University of Warwick with Masters degree in Engineering Management and an Engineering Doctorate. He is a Chartered Engineer Mechanical Engineer.