A focus on…Celebrations

During the 2022 AGM during the EPC’s Annual Congress, elections were for the positions of Vice President and President Elect. and four ordinary Board members. Prof John Mitchell (UCL) was elected as Vice President and President Elect of the EPC, while Prof Colin Turner’s term as Vice President came to an end. Prof Mitchell is Professor of Communications Systems Engineering in the UCL Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering and Vice-Dean Education in the UCL Faculty of Engineering Sciences.

A new addition, Dr Abel Nyamapfene will be joining as a new Board member alongside Prof Catherine Hobbs, Prof Mike Bramhall and Greg Rowsell who retained their positions on the Board in the AGM election. Dr Nyamapfene is Programme Director MSc Engineering & Education, Associate Professor (Teaching) at UCL.

During the 2021 AGM, elections were held for the two-year positions of Honorary Secretary and Honorary Treasurer. Prof David Harrison was re-elected as Honorary Secretary and Prof Stephanie Haywood as Honorary Treasurer. Prof Mike Sutcliffe also officially began his term as EPC President after taking over from Prof Colin Turner, who steps down to the role of Vice President for the coming year.

At the time of his appointment Prof Sutcliffe was Deputy Dean at TEDI-London and took over from Prof Colin Turner, Interim Dean of Learning Enhancement at Ulster University, whose two-year term of office came to an end. Having chaired the EPC’s Engineering Education, Employability and Skills Committee, Prof Sutcliffe was elected as President-Elect in 2020 and has served a year as Vice President. He was instrumental in leading much of the EPC’s influential work on degree apprenticeships, a topic he had already become expert in when helping to establish the initial Degree Apprenticeship Programme at Kingston University, where he served as Pro-Vice Chancellor and Dean of Science, Engineering and Computing. Prior to that he has also worked as Head of the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at the University of Manchester, where he achieved global top 25 status in QS World Rankings and a top 3 position in the UK in REF 2014.

Congratulations to Prof Mark Sandler (Queen Mary University of London), Prof Sarah Spurgeon (UCL), Prof Paul Conway (Loughborough University), Prof Jin Wang (Liverpool John Moores University) and Prof Rossi Setchi (Cardiff University) who were appointed to the Research Excellence Framework 2021 Engineering Sub panel 12 following the EPC nominations in 2020. 

Congratulations to Rachel Beel, Glasgow Caledonian University, and to Dan Hicks, University of Brighton, joint winners of the EPC Hammermen Student Award 2020; and Amelie Taylor, UWE Bristol, winner of the EPC Hammermen Student Award 2022.

The Hammermen Award is an annual prize, presented in association with the Hammermen of Glasgow, to celebrate engineering students’ excellence. These competitions received large numbers of submissions and five finalists were chosen in each year to compete for the coveted prize at the EPC Congress.

Every two years, the EPC honours an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to engineering education and academia. In 2020, The Presidents’ Prize went to Professor John Perkins CBE FREng FIChemE FIMA FIET FCGI FRSA. Prof Colin Turner invited Professor John Perkins CBE to receive the award in and deliver an address as a live webcast in June 2020.

Until 2015, John Perkins was the Chief Science Adviser at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), before which he was Provost at the MASDAR Institute of Science & Technology in Abu Dhabi, leading the development of this new institution. His academic focus is as an expert on Process Systems Engineering and his career has spanned senior roles at the University of Manchester, Imperial College London, the University of Sydney and the UNiversity of Cambridge. He has served as President of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and Vice-President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Among other companies and consultancy roles, he has worked for ICI and Shell and founded various spin-out start-ups. In 2006, he was awarded the CBE for services to engineering and science.

The 2022 President’s Prize was awarded to Dr Hayaatun Sillem CBE FIET, CEO of the Royal Academy of Engineering, for her exemplary contribution to the world of engineering. Prof Mike Sutcliffe, CEO of the EPC, presented Dr Sillem with this prize at the EPC’s Annual Congress 2022 dinner aboard the SS Great Britain.

Dr Sillem’s distinguished career includes roles at the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), the Department for International Development, and the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. She chairs the UK government’s Business Innovation Forum and serves as a trustee of various not-for-profit organisations, including EngineeringUK, the Foundation for Science and Technology and the St Andrews Prize for the Environment. Dr Sillem has also been named one of the ‘Inspiring 50 Women in Tech’ and won a Suffrage Science Award in 2021. Her contribution to national debates and policymaking has been wide-reaching and, in particular, Dr Sillem has been a driving force for expanding the diversity of the engineering profession. She was appointed Chief Executive of The Royal Academy of Engineering in 2018 and of The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2020. With Dr Sillem at the helm, the EPC’s close working relationship with RAEng has become ever stronger with partnerships on campaigning, on degree apprenticeships, and on engineering ethics. This most recent work gave rise to a toolkit produced by the EPC with the support of RAEng to embed ethical approaches in engineering education and practice.