Ceres Power Holdings PLC (LSE:CWR) has appointed Caroline Hargrove, a founding member of McLaren Applied Technologies, as the company's new chief technology officer (CTO).
Hargrove, who was technical director and lately CTO at McLaren as part of a 12-year association with the sister company of the McClaren Formula 1 team, has been a non-executive director at Ceres for three years.
She will take over as CTO from Mark Selby, who will move to a newly created position of chief innovation officer.
The company highlighted Hargrove's "extensive experience in growing and managing technical teams in fast-moving innovative environments and commercialising new technologies across a range of high growth sectors and applications".
As well as McClaren Applied Tech, she was CTO of Babylon Health for two and a half year and most recently was CTO at medtech start-up Zedsen.
Ceres said Selby, who joined Ceres in 2006, will lead the innovation of new technologies beyond the established solid oxide portfolio.
"Mark is stepping away from the fulltime operational CTO role to focus his efforts on developing new and future opportunities for Ceres, building the team and relationships to make this happen. This new role represents an exciting step in Ceres' evolution to grow the range of opportunities to pursue, aligned with its purpose of providing clean energy technology to meet the challenge of climate change," the company said.
Chief executive Phil Caldwell said: "Mark has led tirelessly on all aspects of the strategy and delivery of Ceres' SteelCell technology development. This new role will leverage his considerable knowledge while providing the opportunity for him to focus on establishing future innovative technology.
"Caroline is an engineer with huge credentials and an expansive knowledge of exploiting technology commercially. I am delighted that she has agreed to join the company as an executive. She brings unique skills and experience in leading digitalisation and managing high growth technology teams which will be invaluable for the next chapter of Ceres' development."
Hargrove said: "Working with Phil and the team over the past three years has convinced me that Ceres has the technology, the people and the commercial opportunities to make a meaningful contribution to the global energy transition."