Abstract
Professor Sarah Spurgeon, has succeeded Lord Oxburgh as the Institute’s new President. A Fellow of the Institute (FInstMC) and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng), Prof Spurgeon has a national and international track record as a control engineer.
Currently she is Head of the School of Engineering and Digital Arts at the University of Kent, having moved there in 2008 from the University of Leicester, where she was Head of Engineering. She has been involved with the Institute throughout her career, initially with its accreditation of academic courses. In 2004 she was elected as a Fellow and since 2012 has been a member of Council.
Sarah’s overall contributions to engineering have been recognised by her election in 2008 as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She initially worked with the aerospace industry to develop and improve its control strategies, specifically with BAE Systems and Lucas Industries. Away from aerospace she has brought insights to: the control of robotic limbs, the monitoring of the restoration of function to human limbs and the control of a range of vehicles. Her research contributions were recognised by the award of an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ (IEEE) Millenium Medal (2000) and the InstMC’s Honeywell International Medal (2010) for distinguished contribution as a control and measurement technologist to developing the theory of control. Along the way she has published more than two hundred papers on control engineering.
Sarah has provided a great deal of support for learned societies with an interest in control, serving on committees of the American Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications. She chaired the Council of the UK Automatic Control Council from 2008 to 2011 and, most recently, has been invited to sit on the Council of the International Federation of Automatic Control for three years from 2014. In this role she will be Vice-Chairman of the Federation’s Policy committee. She is a member of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council which provides independent advice and analysis to the Secretary of State for Defence. For the Royal Academy of Engineering, she chairs the Ingenious Panel, a grant scheme for creative public engagement with engineering projects supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which seeks to put engineering at the heart of society.
She believes the Institute has a key part to play supporting its membership and representing its frequently hidden yet crucially important specialisms of instrumentation and control across industry, education and government. Sarah’s national and international profile provides a strong foundation on which to take this forward. Most recently she has been awarded an OBE for services to Engineering.