Professor Bruce Wood is a Director of the Trades House of Glasgow, a charity focusing on both educational initiatives and supporting people in need, giving donations of more than £750,000 annually to deserving causes and individuals.
Bruce was born in Edinburgh, and is a qualified Designer with 17 years experience in industry on a national and international scale, such as Rawlplug, Schlumberger, Honeywell and Carnaud Metal Box.
He moved into Academia with Glasgow School of Art primarily to work on the Joint programme with Glasgow University the BEng Product Design Engineering. Throughout this period he also served as the Scottish Region Chair of the Chartered Society of Designers, the professional body relating to design.
During the Year of Architecture and Design 1999, held in Glasgow he took the position of Director of the “Glasgow Collection”, a design led economic development intervention. The programme led directly to the of over 50 new products with 23 gaining commercial success internationally and attracted over 25 national and international design awards.
During this year he was also the director the “Festival of Design” of a 2 week programme of visiting internationally respected design companied and individuals sharing their work and experience.
His work in the Glasgow collection led on to similar roles in Newcastle, Staffordshire and Brazil, in total these intervention programmes have resulting in over 200 successful products 50 new companies created and over 30 design awards.
In 2002 he joined Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU) where he created Masters programmes in Product Design and Development, Digital Media and more recently, Design Practice and Management. He has supervised numerous Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) projects and his present research activities include economic development through the use of creative industries as a driver for new products and services. He has attracted over £3miilion funding to the university all related to links with industry. In 2009 He completed his PhD entitled “Design as an Economic Development Enabler”, this work was based on 4 design intervention programmes across the UK and Brazil.
While operating as a professor in GCU he also leads the university initiative on Enterprise and Entrepreneurship and established UHatch the GCU business start-up incubator. This work has directly enabled and facilitated 30 start up companied with GCU relating to approximately 50 individuals. These companies have won national and international awards and are progressing onto commercial success and as result of this work. Bruce sits on several Scotland wide steering groups relating to Enterprise /Entrepreneurship education. Bruce also led a successful bid to bring the largest academic conference on Entrepreneurship Education to Glasgow and GCU in September 2017.
In October 2018 he was appointed Head of Department of Applied Computer Games with GCU.
Bruce served as Deacon of the Hammermen in 2019/20 and again in 2023/24, and was voted in as the Prese of the Weavers Society of Anderston for 2023.
