The PAAC inaugural chair is Sir John O’Reilly. Prior to joining Cranfield University as Vice Chancellor in 2006, Sir O’Reilly was Chief Executive of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). He has held academic appointments at Essex, Bangor, and UCL as well as positions in industry/government. He is currently Chairman of NICC (Standards) Ltd and a Director of the ERA Foundation Ltd.
A Chartered Engineer, he is a Fellow and member of Council of the Royal Academy of Engineering, an International Fellow of Académie Hassan II des Sciences et Techniques and of Academia das Ciencias de Lisbon, a former President of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and of EUREL, the Confederation of European Professional Electrical Engineering Societies. He holds honorary doctorates/Fellowships from Essex, Bangor and UCL and is an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers. Widely published, with over 350 research papers and three books, he was awarded the JJ Thomson Medal of the IEE for ‘distinguished contributions to electronic engineering’. He was awarded a knighthood for contributions to science in 2007. In the wider the international arena he Chairs the President’s Academic Advisory Committee of Al Ghurair University and is a Board Member of A*STAR, the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore.
Nam Pyo Suh is the President of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). Previously, he was at MIT from 1970-2008, where he was the Ralph E. & Eloise F. Cross Professor, Director of the Park Center for Complex Systems, and the Head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering for ten years. From 1984-1988, Dr. Suh served in as a Presidential Appointee at the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) in charge of engineering.
He is the recipient of the 2009 ASME Medal, the 2006 General Pierre Nicolau Award of CIRP, the 2008 Pony Chung Award of the Pony Chung Foundation, the 2008 Inchon Education Award of the Inchon Memorial Foundation, the 1997 Ho-Am Prize for Engineering, the 2000 Mensforth International Gold Medal of IEE (UK), the 2001 Hills Millennium Award from IED (UK), the Distinguished Service Award of NSF, and many others. He received seven honorary doctoral degrees from universities in four continents.
He is the author of over 300 papers and seven books, holds more than 70 US patents. His contributions include the delamination theory of wear, the solution wear theory, a theory on the genesis of friction, Axiomatic Design theory, and microcellular plastic known as MuCell. At KAIST, he invented the On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV) and the Mobile Harbor (MH). He received his B.S., in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in1959, M.S., in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1961, and Ph.D, in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1964.
Don Giddens is the current President of the American Society of Engineering Education. He received all his degrees (BAE 1963, MSAE 1965, and Ph.D. 1966) from Georgia Tech and joined the faculty in 1968, after two years in the aerospace industry. In 1992 he left his position as the Chair of Aerospace Engineering to serve as the Dean of the Whiting School of Engineering and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University. In 1997, Giddens rejoined Georgia Tech to establish the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department between Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering and Emory University’s School of Medicine. He served as the founding Chair until July 2002, when he became the Dean of the College of Engineering. Giddens retired from Georgia Tech on July 1, 2011 and currently continues his research on a part time basis as a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department.
Dr. Giddens is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), a founding Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and Fellow of the American Heart Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He received the H.R. Lissner Award from ASME in 1993 and was the ASME Thurston Lecturer in 1996. Giddens has served in a variety of professional activities involving engineering education and biomedical research. He is currently President of ASEE, and Chair of the Bioengineering Section of the NAE. He is the author of over 300 publications, book chapters and presentations, and continues an active research program in biomedical engineering. Dean Giddens recently chaired an NAE project that developed a report, “Changing the Conversation: Messages for Improving the Public Understanding of Engineering.”
Richard Miller is the President of the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in 1999. He served as Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Iowa from 1992-1999, and spent the previous 17 years on the engineering faculties at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Miller's research interests are in applied mechanicsand he is the author or co-author of about 100 reviewed journal articles and other technical publications. The recipient of five teaching awards at two universities, he is a past chair of the Engineering Advisory Committee at NSF, past chair of the AITU, a member of the Visiting Committee at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University, and has been a consultant to the World Bank on the establishment of new academic institutions, among other activities.
A native Californian, Dr. Miller earned his B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, Davis, where he received the 2002 Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award. He earned his M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. in Applied Mechanics from the California Institute of Technology.
Bertil Andersson is the President of Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). As NTU’s Provost in 2007, he strengthened the university’s profile as one of the fastest-growing research-intensive universities in the world. Today, NTU is the youngest university ranked among the world’s top 100 universities, with more than S$830m in sustainability research. He is a plant biochemist of international reputation and is the author of over 300 papers in photosynthesis research, biological membranes, protein and membrane purification and light stress in plants.
A former Trustee of the Nobel Foundation, Professor Andersson was the Rector (President) of Linköping University from 1999-2003; the Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation from 2004-2007; and the former Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry in 2007. As a Visiting Professor and Fellow of Imperial College London, Prof Andersson is the key driver of Singapore’s new medical school jointly established by NTU and Imperial College London. Professor Andersson is a recipient of the Wilhelm Exner Medal, joining an illustrious list of laureates, which includes 15 Nobel Prize winners. He holds honorary doctorates from several universities and is a research adviser to the Swedish government.
Prof Andersson is an Advisory Board Member of the Euroscience Open Forum and a Board member of the Trustee Committee of the Körber Foundation of the Max Planck Society. He is also a Board member of the Building and Construction Authority and A*STAR Singapore, and serves on the Governing Board of the Singapore Centre on Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.
