Dr. Jason Harcup is Global Vice President for Skin Care Research & Development, responsible for the end-to-end R&D delivery from innovation to market in 89 countries and across several billion Euros of turnover. He is also Global Vice President for the Prestige Division (Dermalogica, Kate Somerville, Murad, Hourglass, Ren Skincare, Garancia & Living Proof). He has ultimate responsibility for several hundred mostly PhD level scientists located in laboratories across the USA, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Russia, South Asia, North Asia and Southeast Asia. In 20 years with Unilever, he has been Site Leader for the brand new Euro 60million Shanghai R&D Facility and headed Unilever’s Research organization in China, growing the facility capability together with a two-dozen strong network of Chinese Academic Institutes, as well as responsibility for a state-of-the-art Skin Clinical Testing Facility which has now processed 700,000 subjects. He is located at, and heads up, Unilever’s R&D Campus in the United States.
The teams he has led around the world have delivered a string of technologies totaling several hundred million Euros of turnover in global brands including enamel regeneration in Oral Care (Regenerate), salivary enzyme and protein boosting in Zendium, gender-tuned Anti-dandruff brand Clear, and Dove Nutrium Moisture, the stratum-corneum lipid replenishing Number 1 Dermatologist recommended Bodywash in North America. He personally holds several patents. He has been on the Faculty of Health and Beauty America, a Beauty Disruptor with the CEW network, a member of the Board of Judges for the RSC Emerging Technologies Initiative and a co-convenor of the Unilever Asian Dermatological Forum. He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Biology in 2016, having also been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015.
Prior to Unilever Jason graduated from Cambridge University, has worked as a scientist for the UK Ministry of Defense, and has been an adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, with graduate education responsibility, as well as carrying out research for numerous US government and commercial bodies. He is author of various publications and has delivered several invited talks as an industry leader.