Piotrek Gierszewski

Foresight Researcher

Piotrek is a Foresight Researcher responsible for research into existing projects and the scoping of potential new prizes for Nesta Challenges.

Piotrek is passionate about using foresight as a tool for achieving social impact; exploring possible visions for the future, anticipating obstacles and enabling the desirable opportunities to happen. He has over ten years’ experience in research within academia, private and non-profit sectors.
At Nesta, he is responsible for researching social and environmental problems and identifying opportunities to tackle them. He turns insight into practice by designing challenge-driven, open-innovation competitions that support communities of solvers and incentivise solutions to these problems. For over 2.5 years, Piotrek has worked on topics ranging from emerging innovations in whale conservation and legal services to scaling up access to surgical procedures in low resource settings.
Prior to joining Nesta, Piotr had worked at a boutique science commercialisation consultancy as a technology scout and at the University of Cambridge as a life scientist specialising in epigenetics and molecular biology. He also co-lead a few grassroots networks focused on the translation of 'deep' and/or 'bench' science into commercial opportunities and acceleration of their market entry.
Piotrek is a fire performer specialising in ‘poi’ spinning and fire breathing (though less so since he grew a beard), loves nature and spending time outdoors.