Lawrence Normie

Lawrence Normie is an interdisciplinary technology and engineering innovation specialist, with over 33 years’ cross-sector experience in commercial and institutional research and development.  Lawrence has degrees in physics (University of Manchester) and electrical & electronics engineering (University College London). He is a chartered physicist with the Institute of Physics (UK).

Between 1998 and 2014 Lawrence was Executive Director of GeronTech – The Israeli Center for Assistive Technology and Aging, where he led regional and international initiatives for technology research and innovation on ageing and disabilities. Between 1992 and 1998, Lawrence was a partner at Plexus Consultants (Jerusalem), where he specialized in technology innovation and transfer, consulting to private commercial, NGO, and government sectors. During this period he served as an expert assessor of industrial research grants for the Office of the Chief Scientist at Israel’s Ministry of the Economy (now the Israel Innovation Authority).

Lawrence has 20+ years’ association with the European Commission’s successive research and innovation framework programmes (currently Horizon 2020), that included coordinating a 6-nation R&D project on wearable robotics for people with upper-limb motor disorders. He continues to serve as an external expert consulting to the EC for proposal calls evaluations and project progress monitoring in shared cost multinational collaborative R&D initiatives.

A former Secretary General of the International Society for Gerontechnology, Lawrence is associate editor of ISG’s peer-reviewed journal Gerontechnology. He represents Israel’s national standards body on ISO technical committees TC173 (Technical systems and aids for disabled or handicapped persons) and TC159/WG2 (Ergonomics for special populations).

Lawrence is married with two children and lives in Jerusalem.