Who's Who

Charles Curry

Joanne Akers

Liz New

Calum Dalmeny

Steve Newcombe

Steve Wells

Gregg Watson

Ian Cotts

Duncan Smith

Richard Elsmore

Louise Davies

Beverley Coleman

Gean Jones

Amanda Cox

John Lyons

Andrew Hancock

Darren Share

Chris Farrow

Ian Smith

Tony Flavin

Billy Marshall

Prof Charles Curry, BEng, CEng, FIET, FRIN, Managing Director

Charles Curry is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), and the Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), and founder & Managing Director of Chronos Technology Ltd. Charles graduated in Electronics from Liverpool University in 1973, and started his career at GEC Hirst Research Centre working on silicon MOS boundary research, progressing to Racal Instruments where he was responsible for sales of test equipment including specialist frequency and time products such as Loran C and Caesium standards. Later with GSE Rentals Charles was involved with some of the first civil GPS and laptop PC deployments into the North Sea offshore oil exploration industry during the early 1980s.

He founded Chronos in 1986, a leading global system integrator, service solutions provider and manufacturer for synchronisation, timing, GNSS and GPS jamming, detection products based in the UK. Chronos has supplied and installed many thousands of GPS & Timing systems worldwide for mobile and fixed line telecom operators. The Chronos Synchronisation MasterClass has been delivered to more than a 1000 delegates across the globe.

Charles founded the International Timing & Sync Forum (ITSF) in 2001 and chairs the ITSF Steering Group. He is also a member of the Workshop on Synchronization in the USA Telecommunications Systems (WSTS) Steering Group which meets annually. Charles is also a member of the Industry Advisory Boards for the Universities of Liverpool and Bath, Electrical and Electronics Faculties.

In 2012 Charles was awarded Honorary Professorships from both the University of Bath, Faculty of Engineering & Design, Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering and the University of Liverpool, Department of Electrical Engineering & Electronics.

Joanne Akers, General Manager and Company Secretary

Joanne joined Chronos in September 2001 from Fortis Insurance in Gloucester where she was responsible for 450 employees, initially as Personnel Officer before being promoted to Senior Personnel Officer after 18 months' service. 

Previously she was Personnel Officer for Gloucester based Dupont for 5 years.  Joanne, who is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, is responsible for all the day to day business administration at Chronos.

Liz New, Financial Controller

Liz joined Chronos in February 2013 from Delphi Diesel Systems where she was Finance Manager. A qualified accountant, prior to Delphi Liz was Financial Controller with Stoneridge Pollak where she completed a postgraduate in Employment Law at the University of Surrey and qualified as MCIPD. Liz joined Stoneridge Pollak from Assureweb Ltd where she managed the transition of a small company into a division of a large corporation following the company's sale.  Earlier in her career Liz worked as an Operations Analyst for W H Smith News where she completed her MBA and prior to that she was Financial Controller and Company Secretary at Pirelli Power Transmissions.

Calum Dalmeny, BSc (Hons), Chief Technical Officer

Calum has over 30 years experience in the electronics industry, with nearly 15 years experience specialising in all areas of timing and synchronisation for the telecom and datacom market sectors with an in depth knowledge of the use of GNSS for timing systems and protocols such as IEEE 1588 PTP. Calum heads up the product development group within Chronos Technology and has direct responsibility for all R&D activities and product roadmaps, and also serves as a member of the executive management team

Steve Newcombe, MSc. MIET, Account Manager UK

Steve joined Chronos as an Account Manager in April 2006, although his connection with Microsemi and its constituents goes back to 1999. Steve's involvement in telecommunications began in 1984 as an antenna design engineer, progressing into engineering management and culminating in Director status of a leading UK antenna manufacturing and installation business. He moved into the Sales environment in 1999 selling Microsemi (formerly Datum) time and timing synchronisation solutions for enterprises and telecomms carriers.

Steve holds a Master of Science Degree and is a Member of the IET.

Steve Wells, Account Manager

Steve joined from Chronos' major supply partner Microsemi Inc, a leading timing and synchronisation manufacturer based in the USA,  where he worked for nine years firstly as a sales engineer responsible for pre-sales support and then as Regional Sales Manager responsible for sales and business development for the EMEA region.  Prior to this Steve was a network design engineer for Cable & Wireless responsible for core network sites and leading new design projects.   He started his career in the Royal Signals where he spent seven years installing, maintaining and operating all types of telecommunications equipment and information systems.

Gregg Watson, Account Manager - Scandinavia

Gregg joined Chronos in 2008 as Account Manager for our successful Scandinavian market.  Formerly section manager with Tesco responsible for the online shopping department for Liverpool, he brings extensive customer relationship and managerial skills. 

Gregg holds a BSc (Hons) in Applied Computer Technology from Liverpool John Moore's University.

Ian Cotts, Account Manager

Ian is Account Manager for GNSS, Government & Enterprise products within the Resillient Navigation and Timing area of Chronos Technology. With experience gained in the areas of Transportation, Air Traffic, Military and Civil Infrastructure he comes from a background in the GNSS Timing market and was previously Sales Engineer at Time & Frequency Solutions for five years.

Duncan Smith, International Business Manager

Duncan’s career has been in telecoms from the onset, starting as Post Office telecom apprentice working on valve based relay sets. He has worked for multinational suppliers such as Ericsson, Alcatel and Newbridge as well as two US based start-ups in the Microwave world. He has experience of building and managing partners and resellers across APAC, Africa, Russia and the Middle East. He joined Chronos in 2014 and is responsible for business through our global network of partners and resellers. He also has a role in business development and marketing both in the UK and internationally.

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Richard Elsmore, Sales Support Engineer

Richard is part of the Chronos' Sales Support Department.  With over 10 years' experience in dealing with IT related issues, Richard assists the business development of sync technology as we roll out projects involving PTP and our own SyncWatch.

Louise Davies, Marketing & Pre-Sales Manager

Part of the Sales & Marketing team, Louise is responsible for PR, marketing communications and pre-sales activities and joined Chronos in July 2001.

Beverley Coleman, Order Processing & Credit Manager

Beverley joined Chronos in 2001 as Credit Manager, taking on the additional area of Order Processing in 2004. Formerly with Microlease as Credit Control Manager,  she has over 20 years experience in credit control.

Gean Jones, Internal Sales Co-ordinator

Gean joined Chronos in 2006 and works with the sales team. She is responsible for the preparation of customer quotations, suppliers' pricing and leadtimes.

Amanda Cox, Internal Sales Co-Ordinator

Amanda joined Chronos in 2002 and works with the sales team. She is responsible for the preparation of customer quotations, suppliers' pricing and leadtimes. Amanda is also an Internal Quality Auditor.

John Lyons, BSc, MSc, Engineering & Projects Manager

John started his telecommunications career in 1978 as an apprentice telecommunications engineer for Plessey.  He has practical experience on TXE4A, System X, PDH, SDH, various network management and Intelligent Network (IN) platforms.  Over the 21 years he was working for Plessey, GPT and Marconi Comms, he gained extensive commercial, technical and project management experience including involvement in strategic activities such as SLAs and chairing technical and performance review meetings with customers.  His last role before joining Chronos was to manage Marconi's international support contracts on switching and IN platforms.  John joined Chronos in 1999 to head up the operations department and is responsible for pre sales technical support, testing, installation and commissioning.  He also project manages all live implementation and handover on all telecom contracts and systems.

Andrew Hancock, Customer Support Manager

Andrew heads up our Customer Support Team and has gained a wealth of technical experience since joining Chronos in 2001.  Andrew manages the Chronos support team responsible for the 24x365 helpdesk and man on site module replacement services offered to customers as part of the Chronos Spares Support Plan (SSP).

Darren Share, Customer Support Engineer

Darren is part of our Customer Support Team.  Darren brings six years of IT technology experience and provides technical assistance to our customers and helps maintain the reputation this important Team.

Chris Farrow, BSc (Hons), AMInstP, MIET, Technical Manager

Chris is responsible for all technical services including Synchronisation MasterClass Training, Sync Audit and network planning consultancy, customer demonstrations and SyncWatch product development.  Chris participates in the ITU Study Group 15 Question 13 (Synchronisation) and regularly presents synchronisation papers at international conferences such as WSTS and ITSF.  Chris joined Chronos from Marconi's UK Technical Assistance Centre in Liverpool in January 2006. During his time at Marconi, Chris gained 17 years experience working in all aspects of telecommunications and was responsible for the field trial, rollout and support of enhanced synchronisation products and services within Marconi's "System X" Switching and SDH/DWDM products.

Chris holds an Honours degree in Physics & Electronics from UMIST – University of Manchester, Institute of Science & Technology.

Ian Smith, Product Manager

Ian is responsible for managing the development and outsourced manufacturing of Chronos' own range of products.  He joined from Kohler Mira and prior to that Rank Xerox where he held various Quality Assurance, Supply Management and Product Management roles over a period of twenty years.   He holds a Degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering from the Polytechnic of Wales.

Tony Flavin, MIET, Manager - Strategic Research

Tony joined the Post Office Research department (later to become BT) as an apprentice in 1974 and started his career in electronic and semiconductor design for early digital transmission systems. Later he helped develop the first optical fibre networks, before specialising in SDH and network synchronisation. He represented BT’s interests globally at ETSI and ITU for SDH and OTN/DWDM transport systems and gained experience across network design, procure, test, development and rollout. In the later years with BT he was responsible for BT’s Timing platforms supporting frequency time and phase across all of its platform domains. At Chronos, Tony is responsible for strategic research, technical support within the research projects and helping new products to emerge into the marketplace.

Billy Marshall, Research Systems Engineer

Billy has worked with global positioning, navigation and timing systems since 2001 in a variety of capacities including sales, engineering, project management and consultancy. Currently working with cutting-edge timing and RF interference detection technologies to assess and optimise design approaches for research projects, build and run test systems, develop procedures for strategic and research projects, taking leadership on user community PoC trials and demonstrators in the field in both industrial, government and military applications and co-operating with external research partners and collaborators such as academia and industry.