Engineering news
Professor Dame Ann Dowling today succeeds Sir John Parker as president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Fellows of the Academy elected Dame Ann as their first female president at the 2014 AGM last night. Dame Ann succeeds Sir John Parker, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, who served as president for three years from 2011.
Dame Ann has been head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge since 2009. She became a Cambridge research fellow in 1977 and has remained at the university ever since, including visiting research posts at MIT in 1999 and Caltech in 2001. In 1993, she became the Department of Engineering's first ever female professor.
Her work in aeronautics and energy has been recognised by fellowships of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, as well as foreign associate membership of both the US National Academy of Engineering and the French Academy of Sciences. She is also widely acknowledged to be a world authority on combustion and acoustics.
In 2002, Dame Ann's work was recognised in The Queen's Birthday Honours receiving a CBE for services to Mechanical Engineering, and again in 2007 in the New Year's Honours List when she received a DBE for services to science.
Dame Ann said: “Being elected to lead the Royal Academy of Engineering is a great honour. There is a growing recognition of the vital importance of engineering in addressing the many challenges that face society. But there is much work to be done to ensure that UK engineering is in a position to make its optimal contribution, including the need to address our looming engineering skills gap and crucially to pursue a strategy of efficient and sustainable growth in a rebalanced economy.”
Dame Ann started her career as a mathematician and later pursued a PhD in engineering acoustics with Prof John Fowcs Williams, fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, who led pioneering noise-reduction research on Concorde.
She went on to lead the Cambridge MIT Silent Aircraft project, which published its radical new design concept SAX-40 in 2006 with the aim of raising aircraft industry aspirations. She now leads research on efficient, low emission combustion for aero and industrial gas turbines and low noise vehicles, particularly aircrafts.
Sir John Parker, outgoing president said: “I am delighted that Dame Ann Dowling has been elected as the next president of the Academy. As a world-renowned engineer, researcher and academic leader, she will be an inspiration to the profession and equally to those considering engineering as a future career. I am confident that the leadership of the Academy is in great hands.”