Maria Korea is the Manager of the Hong Kong History Centre, the world’s first research centre focusing on the study of Hong Kong history.  

Prior to that, she was the manager of the Smart Internet Lab, a £100M Research Centre on Information and Telecommunication Technologies (ICT) and the Programme Manager of the 5GUK Test Network, a £10M 5G experimentation facility at the University of Bristol, that delivered the world’s first end-to-end 5G systems trials.

MBA and PRINCE2 qualified, Maria is a Knowledge Exchange expert, with 17 years' experience in innovation management, leadership, research governance, policy and strategic partnership development across industry, academia, government and the third sector.

Previously, she worked at the University of Bath managing aspects of (a) the HEIF (HEFCE Higher Education Innovation Fund Investment Fund) an Investment Fund Portfolio aiming to fast-track the exploitation of research outputs from the knowledge base; (b) the EC FP7 funded ECO-SEE Project, a €9M consortia of academic and industry partners from across Europe and India to address emerging health problems associated with modern low carbon buildings; (c) the EPSRC funded ‘Knowledge Transfer EQUAL’ £2M project placing ageing and disability research into practice; and (d) the ERDF INTERREG IVA €5M ‘Materials for Energy efficiency in Transport’ project, a UK-France collaboration. Prior to joining University of Bath, Maria worked at the University of Nottingham, managing the ‘Centre for the Environment’ a Research Centre specialising on interdisciplinary environmental research.

Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts (BA Hons) in Politics and International Relations with Spanish, a Master of Sciences (MSc) in International Development and Security and a Master of Business Administration (MBA), reflecting her interest in commercialisation of research outputs.