Professor Stephen Heppell is recognised as being "Europe's leading online education expert". He spent around a quarter of a century building Ultralab, which established an exceptional, unique, reputation as a world leading learning technology research centre. He has been a professor for 18 years, including nowadays a number of visiting chairs too, but he now heads his own policy, research and practice consultancy Heppell.net Ltd, at the heart of a network of innovative collaborators worldwide. His inaugural lecture as a new professor back in 1987 was "eyes on the horizon, feet on the ground!".

He has always wanted to help children and parents get the most out of IT and Education and to bring ordinary people into the internet age. Interestingly for us, and rather spookily, Richard first met Stephen way back in early 2000 to talk about our ideas. Before they even began to talk Stephen took Richard on a walk around Ultralab showing him old computers, calculators etc, sadly some of which Richard had used when he first started work. The idea of bringing young people together through an on-line, interactive learning resource appealed to Stephen and he was most enthusiastic about the concept.

Now he has agreed to become our patron as well as continuing to offer us his expertise and advice. Some of his current projects include building a Learning Metric to help governments measure what improves when they innovate in education, a Global Learning Survey to map out emerging trends in teaching and learning annually and hosting the annual "Be Very Afraid" DfES / BAFTA event showcasing children's digital ingenuity, and much more besides. He is a regular in ministerial offices (he advises a string of governments, rich and poor), in blue-chip and innovative boardrooms, and is frequently found in the world's media.