Issued: 4 August 2009

EPSRC has announced its latest appointments to its Council, the senior decision making body responsible for determining its policy, priorities and strategy.

Three new appointments have been made: Professor Tim Pedley, Professor Pierre-Louis Viollet and Dr David Watson. The appointments are for a period of four years from May 2009.

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 and none hold any other Ministerial appointments.

An honorarium of £6,740 per year will be paid to Professor Pedley and Professor Viollet. Dr Watson is also Chair of the EPSRC User Panel and will therefore be paid an honorarium of £8,970 per year.

The 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 Tim Pedley

Professor Tim Pedley FRS is the G I Taylor Professor of Fluid Mechanics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge. He obtained his PhD in DAMTP in 1967 and was then a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Mechanics at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, followed by five years as a lecturer at Imperial College, London, jointly in the Department of Mathematics and the Physiological Flow Studies Unit. He went back to Cambridge in 1973, leaving in 1990 to become Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Leeds, and returning to his present post in 1996.

Professor Pedley was Head of DAMTP from 2000 to 2005. Currently he is President of the International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, while in the past he was President of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (2004-05) and Chair of the World Council for Biomechanics (2002-06). Professor Pedley's research has, since 1968, been in the application of fluid mechanics to understanding phenomena in biology and medicine.

He started exclusively in internal, physiological, fluid dynamics (airflow in the lungs, blood flow in arteries and veins, osmosis, etc). However, in recent years, apart from an ongoing project on self-excited oscillations in collapsible tubes, he has worked more on external flows, concentrating on fish swimming and, especially, the individual and collective behaviour of swimming micro-organisms in suspension. Professor Pedley is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Engineering.

Professor Pierre-Louis Viollet

Professor Pierre-Louis Viollet is Vice President, R&D Co-ordination and Partnership at EDF R&D. He graduated in 1974 from Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris) and in 1977 completed a doctoral thesis at Paris 6 University on computational fluid dynamics for the purpose of the prevision of the length of cooling tower plumes. He has worked for EDF R&D since October 1977, first as a research engineer then group leader on industrial fluid mechanics, then head of the R&D Laboratory of EDF on Hydraulics and Fluid Mechanics in Chatou. In 1994 he moved to a managerial position as deputy director of the Generation Plants Department of EDF R&D, then as Director of the Power Systems Department.

In 2001 he was nominated as Vice-President for R&D Laboratories, and since 2006 has been acting as Vice-President for R&D Coordination and Partnership of EDF R&D. He has supervised the creation of 11 common laboratories involving EDF R&D and French academic partners, as well as a common institute with the University of Karslruhe (Germany) - the European Institute for Energy Research. Pierre-Louis is chairman of the scientific committee of Société Hydrotechnique de France, and of the scientific committee for the Baie du Mont Saint Michel hydro-sediment management. He has been a member of the Technical Committee of the Energy Technologies Institute (UK) for three years. He is a member of the Energy Committee of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France).

Dr David Watson

Dr David Watson is Director of Emerging Technology at IBM's Hursley Laboratory in Hampshire, the largest software development lab in Europe. His main interest is in bringing new software technologies to market by working closely with customers and IBM Research and Development teams worldwide. The current technology foci in his area are: data understanding, sensors and actuators, emerging internet, data federation, and collaboration software. Dave is also the UK lead on the International Technology Alliance in Network Sciences, a joint UK/US government funded programme of research into the fundamental foundations of network theory and associated technologies.

This, and many other aspects of the work in his team, is a collaborative effort with major UK universities. His technical background is in computer graphics, image processing, and data visualization. Dave became a member of the EPSRC User Panel in 2004 and he became Chair of the panel in July 2009.  He is Chairman of the Programme Advisory Board for the RCUK Digital Economy Programme, one the six major cross-council research themes for RCUK.

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 more than £800 million a year in research and postgraduate training to tackle the challenges of the 21st Century.

Contact:

EPSRC Press Office,
Tel: 01793 444404,
pressoffice@epsrc.ac.uk