New University chairs

Dr Trevor Harley
Department of Psychology
Personal Chair in Cognitive Psychology

Professor Harley took his undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge. He became Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee in 1996, having come from the University of Warwick, and he took over as Head of the Department of Psychology in 2003.

His research is on the psychology of language. In the past he has worked with naturally occurring speech errors and he has also constructed a neurally plausible computational model of word production. More recently he has been concerned with disorders of language production, as caused by, for example, brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s diseases. Work has just started on a grant from the Parkinson's Disease Society that will look at disruption to conversational skills in people with Parkinson's disease.

He is author of one of the top-selling texts in the area, "The Psychology of Language".

Dr Pauline Schaap
Division of Cell Biology & Immunology, School of Life Sciences
Personal Chair in the School of Life Sciences

Professor Schaap is an internationally recognised researcher with a very strong publication record. Since coming to Dundee in 1999, she has obtained two major research grants and has built up an active research group, establishing herself as a leading member of the Division. She has elucidated a number of important roles for cyclic nucleotide signaling in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum and the mechanisms by which they are regulated. As well as taking part in the teaching of undergraduate and postgraduate students, Professor Schaap has taken on several organisational activities in the School, such as the quarterly Divisional scientific meetings and the School’s yearly Scientific Symposium.

Dr Eric Abel
Division of Mechanical Engineering
Personal Chair of Biomedical Engineering

Professor Eric Abel is head of the Division of Mechanical Engineering and leader of its medical engineering research group. He came to Dundee as a research fellow in the School of Biomedical Engineering in 1980, after research posts in the Department of Medical Oncology at Charing Cross Hospital in London and the Human Factors Research Unit at Southampton University. He became Director of the School in 1985. In 2000 he became the first head of the new Division of Mechanical Engineering, which, together with the School of Design, has been responsible for introducing the successful new course in Innovative Product Design.

Professor Abel has had a life-long research interest in the advancement of our understanding of human biomechanics and applying it to the design of advanced medical devices and instrumentation. This work is complemented with developments in smart materials and mechatronics being made in his group. It has led to the development of hearing implant systems, surgical access instrumentation and anti-microbial coatings for medical devices and implants.