1 May 2008

New appointments to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council

Professor Anne Anderson, Head of the College of Arts, Science and Engineering at the University of Dundee, has been appointed to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Professor Anderson, who is also Vice-Principal of the University, is one of three new appointments the EPSRC has announced to its Council, the senior decision making body responsible for determining its policy, priorities and strategy.

The new appointments are Professor Anderson, Mr Mike Carr and Professor Roy Sambles. The appointments are for a period of 3 years from 1st April 2008.

Members of Council are appointed by the Minister for Science and Innovation and are drawn from both the academic and industrial communities. Membership is reviewed each year.

Notes for Editors
These appointments have been made in accordance with the requirements of the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments Code of Practice. All appointments are made on merit and political activity plays no part in the selection process. However, in accordance with the original Nolan recommendations, there is a requirement for appointees’ political activity (if any declared) to be made public. None of the appointees have declared any political activity.

An honorarium of £6570 per year is currently paid to all members.

Council is the senior decision making body responsible for determining the policy, priorities and strategy of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, taking advice from the Technical Opportunities Panel, the User Panel and the Societal Issues Panel. It is also accountable for the stewardship of EPSRC’s budget and the extent to which performance objectives and targets have been met.

Appointees’ details
Professor Anne Anderson OBE has spent most of her career at the University of Glasgow where she was appointed to a Chair in 1997 in the 5* Department of Psychology. In 2006 she moved to the University of Dundee to head the new College of Art, Science & Engineering. She is Vice Principal and holds a Chair in Human Computer Interaction, in the School of Computing. As Head of College, she has overall responsibility for budgets, research, teaching, knowledge transfer and commercialisation for four Schools and ten disciplines including: Computing, Mathematics, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electronic Engineering and Physics, as well as the Institute for Medical Science and Technology. She represents the University on the Strategy Board of the Northern Research Partnership for Engineering and related disciplines, a multi-million pound, Scottish Funding Council Research Pooling initiative. Professor Anderson’s research investigates the impact of information and communication technologies. She has held many research grants on these topics funded by EPSRC, ESRC, EC and industry. She has been involved in developing research agendas and securing funding from research councils and government departments. From 1995-2000 she was director of the ESRC Cognitive Engineering programme an initiative that funded 15 projects across the UK on topics concerned with people and information technology. In 2000 she was appointed director of the People at the Centre of Information and Communication Technologies (PACCIT) programme. This was a £7 million LINK programme funded by ESRC, EPSRC and the DTI and aimed to build research collaborations between the universities and industry. In 2002 she was awarded the O.B.E. Professor Anderson does not hold any other ministerial public appointments.

Mike Carr CEng FIEE is Chief Science Officer at BT. As Chief Science Officer, Mike is responsible for BT’s world-leading Research Labs and Commercial Exploitation Unit, including Patent Licensing and Corporate Venturing activities globally. Mike joined BT as a Technician Apprentice in 1972. He has a first class honours degree in Communication Engineering and joined the Visual Communication Research Division at BT Labs in 1980. During his first 15 years with BT’s labs his career has focused on the research, development and practical design of real-time audio/visual and multimedia communications systems. He has several patents to his name in the field of video compression, and is the holder of two prestigious BT awards: the Martlesham Medal for R&D (1992) and the BT Gold medal (1994) for leading multimedia product developments. From 1994 Mike was responsible for driving BT’s company wide technology acquisition strategy and from 1999 he was based in Silicon Valley, California, USA where he established BT’s US Technology office and Corporate Venturing activity. He returned to the UK in 2001 to take on his current post of leading BT’s Research & Venturing activity. Mr Carr does not hold any other ministerial public appointments.

Professor Roy Sambles CPhys FRS F Inst P has been Professor of Experimental Physics at The University of Exeter since 1991. He undertook both his BSc and PhD in Physics at Imperial College London where his PhD work explored the fundamentals of melting. His early research at Exeter concerned Conduction Electron Spin resonance and spin waves in the alkali metals as well as studies of electron scattering in thin metal films. Over the past twenty five years he has worked on the optical properties of liquid crystals; explored the interaction of light with structured metal surfaces (plasmonics); pioneered work on molecular rectification and elucidated the fascinating photonic structures in butterfly wings. Very recently he has turned his attention to ‘designer’ surface plasmons on metamaterial surfaces at microwave frequencies and the further development of surface plasmon-based imaging sensor arrays. In addition to his research activities Professor Sambles is presently a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for IoP publishing, a member of the Board of Reviewing Editors for the journal ‘Science’ and a member of the editorial board of ‘Thin Solid Films’. Professor Sambles also holds a ministerial public appointment as a Member of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council (DSAC), for which he receives a daily rate of £344 per day.

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK’s main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. The EPSRC invests around £740 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change. The areas covered range from information technology to structural engineering, and mathematics to materials science. This research forms the basis for future economic development in the UK and improvements for everyone’s health, lifestyle and culture. EPSRC also actively promotes public awareness of science and engineering. EPSRC works alongside other Research Councils with responsibility for other areas of research. The Research Councils work collectively on issues of common concern via Research Councils UK. Website address for more information on EPSRC: www.epsrc.ac.uk/.

For further information, contact:
Natasha Richardson, EPSRC Press Office, Tel: 01793 444404, E-mail: natasha.richardson@epsrc.ac.uk.

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk