Blog posts

Director of Legal and Regulatory Services 

Bridget Edminson has accepted appointment as Director of Legal and Regulatory Services, with effect from 1 September 2022.

Reporting to the College Secretary and General Counsel, in this role Bridget will lead the team which advises on all legal matters for the College including those covering commercial contracts, corporate and finance, dispute resolution, intellectual property, information technology, charity, and employment law as well as law and regulation specific to the Higher Education sector.

Bridget will join the College from the University of Sussex, where she is currently General Counsel and Director of Governance and Compliance. In this role she has established a central legal function and has assumed responsibility for a range of institutional compliance functions. She also led the university’s COVID-19 response, which received two Higher Education Business Continuity awards, and the university’s response to the UUK Guidelines on Security-related Risks in Internationalisation.

Prior to joining the University of Sussex, Bridget spent 18 years in the Government Legal Service. She worked at the UK Ministry of Defence for 14 years, most recently as Head of the General Law Team. Bridget completed her bachelor’s degree at LSE, followed by an MA at King’s College London, and her Bar Vocational Course at the Inns of Court School of Law; she was called to the Bar in 1997.

Associate Provost (Estates Planning)

Professor Martyn Boutelle has accepted appointment as Associate Provost (Estates Planning), a part-time (0.5 FTE) role, with effect from 1 April 2022 for a term of five years. Professor Boutelle succeeds Professor Neil Alford, who will continue in his role for another three months to facilitate a handover period. 

Reporting to the Provost, Professor Boutelle will lead in defining, developing and overseeing implementation of an Estates Strategy for the College, across all campuses. He will be a member of the President’s and Provost’s Boards, chair the Estates Strategy Group (a sub-committee of President’s Board), and will be a member of the Property Committee (a committee of Council). Given the significant property portfolio at the White City Campus, in which he will play a central role, Professor Boutelle will also be a Board member of Thinkspace and Scale Space. Professor Boutelle will work especially closely with the Vice-Provost (Education and Student Experience), the Vice-Provost (Research and Enterprise) and the Faculty Deans, as well as the Associate Provost (Academic Partnerships).  

Professor Boutelle joined Imperial in 2004 as Reader in Biomedical Sensor Engineering in the Department of Bioengineering and was promoted to Professor of Biomedical Sensors Engineering in 2011. He is currently one of the Consuls for the Faculty of Engineering and the Business School, and his term as Consul ends this summer. Professor Boutelle has held many senior roles in the Department of Bioengineering, including Deputy Head of Department, Director of Courses, and Senior Tutor. 

Professor Boutelle’s research focuses on using techniques which combine electrochemical biosensors in novel microfluidic devices with other real-time measurements of tissue state such as tissue oxygen, electrophysiological activity and local blood flow to give a multimodal data stream to support clinical decision making. 

Head of the Department of Aeronautics

Professor Spencer Sherwin has accepted appointment as Head of the Department of Aeronautics with effect from 1 October 2022, for a period of three years, in succession to Professor Paul Robinson. 

Professor Sherwin joined Imperial in 1995 as Lecturer in the Department of Aeronautics and was promoted to Professor of Computational Fluid Mechanics in 2005. He is currently the Director of the Research Computing Service on a fixed-term basis which ends in September 2022.  

Professor Sherwin’s research focuses on the development and application of parallel spectral/hp element methods for solving partial differential equations. Through open source software his group performs direct numerical simulation, implicit large eddy simulation and stability analysis on a range of problems of relevance to aeronautics, biomedical flows, offshore engineering and vehicle aerodynamics. 

Senior Consul

Professor Jonathan Mestel, Professor of Applied Mathematics in the Department of Mathematics, has been elected as Senior Consul for the period 1 September 2022 to 31 August 2023, to succeed Professor Richard Jardine. 

Professor Mestel is currently the Staff Representative on Council and a Proconsul. He will stand down as Proconsul once he takes up the role of Senior Consul. He had previously served as College Consul for the Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Education Office. 

The full list of Consuls for 2022-2023 is set out below:  

  • Senior Consul: Professor Jonathan Mestel 
  • Faculty of Engineering and the Business School: Professor Ann Muggeridge  
  • Faculty of Engineering and the Business School: Professor Alessandro Astolfi 
  • Faculty of Natural Sciences and cross College organisations: Professor David Evans 
  • Faculty of Natural Sciences and the Education Office: Professor Martin McCall 
  • Faculty of Medicine: Professor Miriam Moffatt 
  • Faculty of Medicine: Professor Liz Lightstone