Category: Engineering

Head of the Department of Computing

Professor Alessandra Russo has accepted the appointment of Head of the Department of Computing, for a term of one year, with effect from 1 July 2024.  

This is to succeed our current Head of the Department, Professor Michael Huth, who is taking up a prestigious senior post at a University in Germany. 

Professor Russo joined Imperial as a PhD student of the Department of Computing in 1991 and became Research Associate in 1995. She was promoted to Professor of Applied Computational Logic in 2016. Professor Russo has held several senior roles within the Department of Computing, including Director of Postgraduate Research and Deputy Head of the Department since 2020. 

Professor Russo’s main research areas are in Computational Logic, Symbolic Machine Learning, Probabilistic and Distributed Inference, and their applications to Intelligent Adaptive Systems, Security, Network Management, Distributed Control Systems for Sensor Networks, and System Biology.

Acting Head of the Department of Earth Science and Engineering

Professor Gareth Collins has accepted the role of Acting Head of Department of Earth Science and Engineering between the period of 1 November 2023 and 28 February 2024.  This is to provide cover for the current Head of the Department, Professor Tina van De Flierdt, while she will be away conducting fieldwork in the Antarctic.

Professor Collins joined Imperial in 2004 as a Research Fellow, after obtaining his PhD in Geology from Imperial in 2002. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer (2011), Reader (2014) and to Professor of Planetary Science in 2018.

Gareth’s research explores the many consequences of collisions in the solar system through the development and application of numerical impact models. Major research contributions include studies of the formation of the Chicxulub impact crater and its role in the K-Pg mass extinction, as well as the formation of many other craters on Earth, the Moon and the role of collisions in the early solar system. He was a co-investigator on the NASA-led InSight mission to Mars and on the Science Investigations Teams of NASA’s DART mission and ESA’s Hera mission.

Vice-Dean (Research), Faculty of Engineering

Professor Julie McCann has accepted appointment as Vice-Dean (Research) for the Faculty of Engineering with effect from 1 October 2022, for a term of office of five years. Professor McCann is currently Interim Vice-Dean (Research), a role she has held since 1 October 2021.  

Professor McCann joined the College in 2001 as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Computing. She was promoted to Professor of Computer Systems in 2014.  

Professor McCann will continue in her roles as Faculty Ambassador for Academic Women, Deputy Director of the UK Petras Centre for Excellence for Internet of Things Systems Cybersecurity, and theme lead for Data Centric Engineering at the Alan Turing Institute.

Professor McCann’s research interests include the behaviours and optimisation of Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems. She was awarded the RCUK Suffrage Science Award for Maths and Computing in 2018. 

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.