First year students may wonder who these people are that preside over their supervisions; second and third year students might like to have their erroneous beliefs about their supervisors' origins corrected! Here's a set of condensed CVs of the Caius teaching staff.
We should add that although Michael Wood, John Thwaites and Derek Ingram have, in theory, all retired, they continue to make valued contributions to Engineering at Caius.
Julian Allwood. M. A. Ph.D. (Eng.)
Email: jma42@cam
Julian Allwood read Engineering at Cambridge, graduating in 1987. He joined a consultancy associated with Imperial College working on the modelling and control of manufacturing systems, particularly in the production of sheet materials - paper, plastic and metal. In 1993 he completed a PhD in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Imperial College on the modelling and control of strip metal rolling. This work was carried out for Alcoa and has led to the implementation of a number of real-time control systems in their production facilities. From 1993 to 1995, Julian held various Research Assistant posts in the Centre for Process Systems at Imperial College, working on integrated modelling of material properties in metal production and modelling the supply chain of "cup-a-soups." In 1995 Julian was awarded an internal scholarship in Imperial College to take their part-time MBA degree, which he completed in 1997. He was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Imperial College in 1996, with an emphasis on teaching and research in manufacturing systems, and in October 2000 joined the Manufacturing Group of the Cambridge University Engineering Department and was appointed as a Fellow of Caius.
Julian's current research interests are in the modelling of production and business systems including work on continuum modelling of steady state deformation, and multi-agent modelling of distributed production and logistic systems. He teaches in the Manufacturing Engineering Trips, and gives the course on Operations Management in the Judge Institute of Management Studies.
While studying for his PhD, Julian was a part-time student in composition and piano at
the Guildhall School of Music. He composes mainly for voices, and has had performances
this year by the BBC Singers, the organist Jane Parker-Smith and a major work at the Stoke
Newington Festival in London.
Thomas
Bligh. M. A., B. Sc (Eng), M.Sc., Ph.D.
Email:
Thomas Bligh received a B.Sc. and MSc (on the mathematical theory of hovercraft jet
curtains.) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Witwatersrand. After 4 years
as a senior research engineer in the Mining Research Laboratories of the Chamber of Mines
of S. Africa he returned to study for a Ph.D. in Physics (Gaseous Detonations at very high
Pressures and their application to a Rock Breaking Device.) and then in 1972 he went to
the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Minnesota as an Assistant Professor.
His main interests there were in oil and gas enhanced recovery, geothermal energy and
energy conservation in buildings. He proposed the idea of earth sheltered buildings and
started the 'Underground Space Centre' to design and research these structures. There are
now well over 60,000 such houses in the U.S.A. alone. In 1976 he joined the Thermal
Sciences Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department to work on heat transfer in
porous media (i.e. earth) and on solar energy, one of his concentrator designs was used in
the largest solar heating and cooling project to date. This led to the design and
construction of the new earth sheltered Civil and Mineral Engineering Building at the
University of Minnesota, for which work he received the `Outstanding Engineering
Achievement of 1983' award from the American Society of Civil Engineers. By this time he
had been appointed Associate Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department of M.I.T.
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) where he continued to work on solar energy
conversion. He was consultant to U.S. Windpower, who built the first 'wind farm' (Of 2000
machines) in California. In 1986 he joined Cambridge University Engineering Department
where he teaches Design in the main Engineering Department and for the Manufacturing
Engineering Tripos. His present research interests are in the design and performance
prediction of multi-hulls, and in designing vision assisted robots for the Human Genome
programme. He has published widely and holds 6 patents.
He has had a long term interest in underwater photography, designs and builds underwater
cameras, and has won numerous awards for his underwater photographs. He is passionately
interested in music. In his spare time he designs, builds and sails boats, with a
specialist interest in catamarans. His new 14 metre ocean racing/cruising catamaran, built
to his own designs, has recently been completed. He claims to have sailed some 25000 miles
without a single mutiny.
He was appointed Director of Studies in Engineering for the College in October 1993 and
was a College Tutor for several years.
David Holburn. M.
A., Ph. D. (Cambridge), MIEE.
Email: dmh@eng
David's first degree was in Electrical Sciences at Cambridge in 1975, followed by a Ph.D. in the Engineering Department on digital image processing for the scanning electron microscope. During this period he became interested in sailplanes and gliding, became a member of the University Gliding Club and eventually attained a Silver Badge for cross-country flights.
After a year as a research associate working on electron-beam lithography, followed by a few months of freelance consultancy for a small Cambridge computer company, he began his first 'real job' as a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science, Westfield College, University of London. This involved the development of a course in which, for the first time, undergraduates had the opportunity to have manufactured and test a silicon integrated circuit of their own design.
He returned to Cambridge in 1986 to take up a lecturing post in the Engineering Department, where he has been responsible for courses in digital electronics, computer image processing and integrated circuit design. His current research interests include image processing, electron microscopy, embedded computing systems, and advanced integrated circuits for optical comunications. David is an active member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and is currently Chairman of the IEE Cambridge Committee. He was made a Fellow of Caius in 1993, and is currently a College Tutor, and, with Thomas Bligh, Co-Director of Studies in Engineering. Most recently he has been elected a member of the College Council. His spare time interests include coastal cruising and sailing, chamber music, and, when time permits, model railways.
Derek Ingram. M. A., B. Sc (Glasgow), FIEE.
Email: dgi1@cus
Derek obtained 1st Class Honours in Electrical Engineering, and the prize for best student of the year at Glasgow in 1945. He graduated at the age of 19 (due to the condensed courses during the war which compressed a four year course into 2½ years). He then spent a couple of years of graduate training in heavy electrical engineering at the G.E.C in Birmingham, followed by twenty six years in the telecommunications division of the G.E.C. ending up in charge of line transmission research at the G.E.C. Hirst Research Centre.
His first job was on the very first commercial microwave link installed in this country, ( London-Birmingham television link) and his last on the first high speed digital system (Guildford - Southampton 120 MBit/s system.). His early work was on thermionic valve systems and he was involved in the first coaxial cable installations and the first transistor equipment developed in this country by the G.E.C. He then spent 15 years in semi-retirement as British Telecoms Teaching Fellow in the Engineering Department lecturing on communications topics, and after another four years as Director of Studies in Caius, he completely retired on the 1st October 1993.
On retirement the College made him a Life Fellow. His main research interest is in digital transmission. He is the joint author of the book 'Digital Transmission Systems' (students may like to note that Chinese and Russian editions are available) and a few years ago he was awarded the IEE Marconi Premium for a paper on digital transmission. He has been a visiting Reader at the University of Aston and a visiting Professor at the University of Singapore, and two years ago spent 3 months at the 'Centre of Excellence in Radio Access Technology' in the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, where he was involved in research in traffic studies for CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) telephone systems. He also likes reading Science Fiction.
Anca Popescu, Ph D (Cambridge), M.Sc. in Electrical
Engineering, Politechnica University, Bucharest.
Email: aep20@eng
Anca graduated in 1996 from the "Politehnica" University in Bucharest with a
1st class MSc degree in Electrical Engineering. For her graduation project she spent 6
months in Grenoble at the Laboratory for the Physics of Electrical Devices and Systems
(part of the ENSERG Institute). The topic of her graduation project was the modelling of
active microelectronic devices. In October 1996 she joined the Engineering Department in
Cambridge as a Ph.D. student. Her research has been focused on microelectronic power
devices, with an emphasis on novel, creative designs and on analytical modelling.
Her present research interests also include solid-state implementations of quantum
computing. She was elected to a Research Fellowship in Caius at the beginning of
last year, and supervises for the college in a number of subjects, including electronics.
Malcolm
Smith. M. A., M. Phil., Ph. D.
Email: mcs@eng
Malcolm's first degree was in mathematics at Cambridge, followed by an M.Phil and Ph.D. in Control in the Engineering Department. He stayed on for just over a year as a research assistant in the Engineering Department and then went to the German Aerospace Research Establishment as a Research Fellow. Following this he spent two years at McGill University, Montreal as Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering and then three years at Ohio State University as Assistant Professor in Electrical Engineering.
He finally returned to Cambridge to take a post as a lecturer in the Engineering Department in September 1990. In 1997 he was appointed Reader. Malcolm's main technical interest is in control systems theory. He is an Associate Editor for the SIAM Journal on Control and Optimisation and in 1992 he was the winner of an IEEE best paper prize.
Since 1991 he has been a consultant to Williams Grand Prix Engineering on active suspension systems. His major non-technical interest is organs. He was organ scholar at Downing while an undergraduate, and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists.
John Thwaites. M. A., Ph. D., FTI, FIMA
John has an impeccable background for an Engineer. The son of a railwayman, brought up in Darlington (we all know where the first railway was - I hope !), his apprenticeship was in REME (up from the barrack room floor!).
He then read mathematics at Oxford and in 1952 joined Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Co. (as it was then called) where he worked on wave guide and antenna problems, and on automatic frequency control. He then taught at Loughborough and Leicester, where his interests turned to applied mechanics, with particular reference to fibre structures and fibre producing machinery.
His researches in this field continued after coming to Caius in 1966 but for the past few years he has also been researching on the mechanics of bacterial skins (i.e. cell walls). He was Director of Studies from 1967 to 1989 during which time his Speeches at the annual Nuts and Bolts Dinners were a highlight of the year's social activities. He was University Lecturer in Mechanics, and has been a Visiting Associate Professor at M.I.T. and Visiting Scientist in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Arizona.
He has now retired; to celebrate he has finally taken his Ph.D. His outside interests are music and fell walking.
Glenn Vinnicombe, M. A. Ph. D.
Email: gv@eng
Glenn obtained his first degree in Engineering from Cambridge in 1984. He then spent three years with British Aerospace at Weybridge, Surrey, as a Dynamics Engineer. There, he worked on dynamic analysis and control system design for the Airbus A320. In 1987 he returned to Cambridge as a College Lecturer and Fellow of Churchill College, where his principal duties were undergraduate supervision in Engineering. At this time he also became involved with the Control Group in the Engineering Department where he obtained his PhD on the theory of robust control.
Since then he has spent brief periods as an Assistant Professor in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota and as a lecturer in Aeronautical Engineering at Imperial College, London. He returned to the Engineering Department in Cambridge as a University Lecturer in April 1995. Glenn's main technical interest is in control theory for uncertain systems and related design issues. Glenn is on sabbatical leave for the whole of the academic year 2001-2002.
Michael Wood. B. Sc. (Eng.) London, Ph. D. (Cambridge),
FIMechE.
Michael entered the engineering industry in 1946 as an apprentice at Rolls Royce Aero Engines in Derby. He studied part time at Derby Technical College and obtained a London University external degree, with first class honours in 1950.
He then came to St. Catharine's College, Cambridge for further study and research into gas turbine compressors, obtained honours in the Mechanical Sciences Tripos in 1951 and was awarded the Ph.D. by Cambridge University in 1955. He then returned to industry, as the Nuclear Project Engineer at Ruston and Hornsby, to set up their design and development team. He returned to Cambridge in 1959 and taught in the Engineering Department until his retirement in 1988. He was elected to a Fellowship in Caius in 1959, and was Director of Studies in Engineering from 1960 to 1967. During his research studentship in Cambridge Michael was awarded a Senior Whitworth Scholarship. These are scholarships that are awarded to students who have come up 'from the shop floor' to study at Universities.
Michael's research was strongly influenced by the needs which he observed in his contacts with Industry. He worked on the stability of the gas bearings used in the nuclear power industry and on computer prediction methods for the flow in centrifugal pump impellers - well before C.F.D.(i.e. computational fluid dynamics) was invented! From this work he went on to the whole design field of rotating machinery, including such topics as shaft stability and vibration, heat transfer and mechanical strength analysis. He was involved in the design of gas circulators for A.G.Rs (advanced gas cooled nuclear reactors) and spent a sabbatical in Switzerland investigating thermal transients in cooled gas turbine blades. This resulted in a computer program that was too big to run on any computer then existing in Switzerland! Later he spent a period in Australia working on problems in pump design which included work on pumps for the Adelaide fresh water system.
Since 'retiring' Michael has continued his work for the I.Mech.E. which includes conducting professional interviews for C.Eng. status and 'accreditation' visits to investigate standards at U.K. and overseas University Engineering Departments. As a Whitworth Scholar himself he has continued to take an interest in this award and is now on the selection panel for the Whitworth Scholarships. His consulting work is now concerned with industrial mistakes (mechanical design failures, thermodynamic misunderstandings and plain straightforward accidents). His other main interests are 'Golf and Grandchildren'. As you will see from the photograph, he occasionally stands in as College Praelector.