Announcements

Mr John Neilson has accepted appointment as College Secretary and Registrar with effect from 1 May 2012. As a member of the Management Board, and reporting to the Rector, he will have overall responsibility for the Registry and the Central Secretariat, and functions including health and safety, risk management, internal audit, and legal matters. He will also be Clerk to the Imperial College Court and Council.

Dr Rodney Eastwood, who has been College Secretary since 2007, will be retiring from the College in April, after almost 25 years service.

Mr Neilson will join the College from the Ministry of Defence, where he is Director, Financial Management. As part of this role he is a non-executive director of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the Met Office.

Mr Neilson’s experience in government spans thirty years. After reading mathematics and engineering at Cambridge, he joined the Department of Energy where he worked on the privatisation of several industries, including gas and electricity. He went on to work in the Economic Secretariat of the Cabinet Office, before becoming Principal Private Secretary to John Wakeham when he was Energy Secretary.

In the 1990s he led Department of Trade and Industry teams advising on policy areas including telecommunications, aerospace and defence, before becoming an executive board member of the gas and electricity regulator Ofgem. From 2005 until 2011 he was Director, Research Base in the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills and its predecessors.

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Professor Nigel Gooderham, Professor in Molecular Toxicology, has accepted appointment as Acting Head of the Department of Humanities with effect from 1 January 2012. He will lead the Department while a search is underway for a successor to Professor Andrew Warwick, former Head of Department, who has left the College after 19 years of service for an appointment at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Gooderham continues as Dean for the Faculty of Medicine (Non Clinical).

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The College invites applications for the posts of Assistant Warden of Parsons House, available from 13 February 2012 and Assistant Warden of Pembridge Gardens, available from 1 April 2012. These posts are open to all staff at the College. The closing date for applications is 17.00 on Friday, 3 February 2012.

Wardens and Assistant Wardens are responsible for the smooth running of the hall and will receive rent-free accommodation in the Hall in return for pastoral and administrative duties. The Assistant Warden should be a good organizer with a desire to help students develop their social life as well as having a balanced approach to their studies. They will normally be expected to work under the guidance of the Warden of the Hall.

Parsons House is a lively hall of residence with 40 students. The hall is located within the grounds of Charing Cross Hospital, Hammersmith. Parsons House is only 20 minutes by bicycle or tube to the South Kensington campus. The wardening team consists of the Warden (living in Pembridge Gardens), an Assistant Warden and a Sub Warden.

Pembridge Gardens is an a Hall of Residence near Notting Hill Gate, about 25 minutes walk from the South Kensington Campus. The hall is a mixed gender residence and houses around 100 undergraduate students. The wardening team consists of a Warden, an Assistant Warden and two Sub Wardens.

For a copy of the Terms of Reference and an Application Form for either post, please contact Dr Marko Krznaric by email.

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The Imperial Festival, due to become an annual event, will offer staff the opportunity to showcase their work to the public through hands-on demonstrations, mass experiments, lectures, debates, competitions, installations and a range of other activities. A marquee will be available with dedicated space for each department to engage with visitors including family, friends, colleagues, alumni, funders, policy makers and the media.

Please save the dates 11-12 May in your 2012 diary. For further details, visit: www.imperial.ac.uk/festival

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Professor Dermot Kelleher, currently the Vice-Provost for Medical Affairs and Head of the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin, has accepted appointment as Principal of the Faculty of Medicine, with effect from 1 October 2012. He will join the Faculty as of 1 July 2012. He will succeed Professor Sir Anthony Newman Taylor who has been Principal since December 2010.

Professor Kelleher graduated in medicine from Trinity College Dublin in 1978, and subsequently completed specialist training in gastroenterology. In 1986 he received a Fogarty Scholarship funding a research fellowship at University of California San Diego. Professor Kelleher returned to Trinity in 1989 as the Wellcome Senior Fellow in Clinical Science and was appointed Professor of Clinical Medicine in 2001. In 2006 he was appointed to his current position as Head of the School of Medicine and Vice-Provost for Medical Affairs.

His research has considered the immune response to many of the leading causes of infectious disease worldwide, and he is the author of over 200 publications and 14 patents. A Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Royal College of Physicians, Trinity College Dublin, and the American Gastroenterology Association, he was awarded the 2011 Conway Medal by the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland.

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Dr Zen Makuch has accepted appointment as Director of the Centre for Environmental Policy with effect from 1 October 2011. He succeeds Professor John Mumford who has completed his term of office.

Dr Makuch joined the College in 1995 as Lecturer in Law in the T H Huxley School, which was subsequently restructured to create the Department of Earth Science and Engineering and the Centre for Environmental Policy. He became Reader in Law in 2001 and has directed the Sustainable Transitions research theme for the past four years, also leading postgraduate teaching programmes in related fields in both the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Business School. In 2003 he received the College’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and was appointed as the College’s Teaching Fellow for Innovation. He has been awarded one of the 2011 Rector’s Medals for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence.

Dr Makuch’s research focuses on the regulation of environment and energy science and technology.  He has been Editor of the journal, European Energy and Environmental Law Review, for the past ten years and has acted as a specialist advisor for the House of Lords, European Commission and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on environment, energy and climate change matters.

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Dr Nicola Rogers, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Medicine, has accepted appointment as Director of Student Recruitment and Admissions with effect from 26 September 2011. Dr Rogers will have academic oversight of the strategic direction of all aspects of undergraduate and postgraduate recruitment, reporting to Professor Julia Buckingham, Pro Rector (Education and Academic Services). The position is part-time; Dr Rogers will spend a day a week continuing to work on her academic activities in the Department of Medicine.

Dr Rogers joined the College in 1996 as a postdoctoral scientist. Following a nine-month period working at Oxford University in 2002, Dr Rogers returned to the College as a Lecturer of Immunology, and Course Organiser for the MSc in Immunology. Dr Rogers became a Senior Lecturer in 2007 and has additionally held the position of Course Director of the BSc in Infection and Immunity within the Department of Medicine since 2009. Since January 2011 she has been Deputy Chair of the Faculty of Medicine Postgraduate Committee. Her research focuses on understanding the immunopathology of the chronic autoimmune disease Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). Dr Rogers received a Rector’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009 and the first Department of Medicine annual teaching award earlier in 2011.

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Professor David Gann has accepted appointment as Deputy Principal (Research and Business Engagement) of the Business School, with effect from 1 September 2011. Professor Gann reports to Professor David Begg, Principal of the Business School, and will work closely with Professor Dot Griffiths, who continues as Deputy Principal of the Business School.

Professor Gann joined the College in 2003 as Chair in Technology and Innovation Management, a joint appointment between the Business School and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He co-founded and became Head of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group in 2005 and has led the Digital Economy Lab since 2010. Professor Gann’s research interests focus on improving performance of innovation processes through digital simulation and prototyping, and the development of new business models. He was awarded a CBE in the 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to engineering.

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Professor Neil Alford and Professor Peter Cheung have been appointed Deputy Principals of the Faculty of Engineering, reporting to Professor Jeff Magee, Principal of the Faculty of Engineering.

Professor Neil Alford accepted appointment as Deputy Principal (Research) with effect from 1 April 2011 in succession to Professor Jeff Magee on his appointment as Principal. He continues as Head of the Department of Materials. Professor Alford joined the College in 2007 as Professor in Physical Electronics and Materials following roles at ICI and London South Bank University where he was Pro-Dean for research.  He became Head of the Department of Materials in 2010. His research focuses on electronic materials including high Q microwave dielectrics and functional thin films. He is a fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Materials, Metals and Mining, the IET, the RSC and the American Ceramic Society.  In 2008 he was awarded the Griffith Medal by IOM3 and was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the same year.

Professor Peter Cheung accepted appointment as Deputy Principal (Teaching) with effect from 1 September 2011 in succession to Professor David Nethercot on his retirement. He continues as Head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Professor Cheung joined the College as an undergraduate student in 1970 in the Department of Electrical Engineering.  After graduating in 1973, he spent three years working for Hewlett Packard in Scotland before returning to Imperial as a research student.  He was appointed lecturer in 1980 and, following a series of promotions, became Professor in Digital Systems in 2002.  His research focuses on reconfigurable systems and VLSI architectures.  He was among the first group of staff to be recognised as Imperial College Teaching Fellows in 1994.

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