MICG - How we are governed

Professor of Control Systems Theory and Design in ECS, University of Southampton

Visiting Professor, School of Engineering Science, University of Skövde

Philip became Pro-Vice Chancellor (R&I) at Falmouth University in 2012.  He led all research and development, and was also Chair of the Centre for Smart Design.  Retiring from Falmouth University in August 2017 to concentrate more time as a Director of Smart Connected Living (SCL) Limited, he has been a Visiting Professor at University of Skövde, Sweden since 1994 and was on the Board of Directors of the Smart Home and Building Association (SH&BA) for over ten years until 2016.  Philip was previously Director of Research at De Montfort University (DMU).  He was also Director of the Mechatronics Research Centre and architect of the Intelligent Machines and Automation Systems (IMAS) laboratory.

Philip studied Production Engineering and Management at Loughborough University whilst working in the automotive industry.  He then studied for a PhD in Robotics, whilst working in research at Loughborough, before joining as an academic member of staff, where he was a founder member of the Manufacturing Systems Integration (MSI) Research Institute.

Philip’s own research focuses on smart digital technologies and their integration with sustainable design to address some of the societal grand challenges such as climate change, energy resilience, health and wellbeing and the ageing society.  Other research interests include digital manufacturing and automation.  Philip was responsible for the founding of Digital Games at Falmouth and the associated research in computer games technology.  He was the architect of the successful European Research Area (ERA) Chair bid for €2.4 million to the FP7 programme in Digital Games research.  He has supervised nearly 50 PhD programmes to completion and has been external examiner on over 50 occasions.

Philip has won over £10 million in research funding from UK and EU agencies including EPSRC, ESRC, BBSRC, InnovateUK, EU FP, British Council, The Royal Society, RDAs and Industry.  He has established a network of research collaborators in industry and academia in UK, Sweden, Germany and Italy.  Philip is Vice-Chair of Mechatronics, Informatics & Control Group at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and Chairs the Mechatronics Forum.

Professor of Machine Systems, University of Bath

Andrew Plummer is Director of the Centre for Power Transmission and Motion Control at the University of Bath.  He has a variety of research interests in the field of motion and force control, including inverse-model based control of electro-hydraulic servo-systems, control of parallel kinematic mechanisms, hybrid hydraulic/piezoelectric actuation, and robot control.

He received his PhD degree from the University of Bath in 1991, for research in the field of adaptive control of electro-hydraulic systems.  He worked as a research engineer for Rediffusion Simulation (now Thales Training & Simulation) from 1990 developing motion and control loading system technology, before taking up a lecturing post in Control Systems & Mechatronics at the University of Leeds in 1994.  From 1999 until 2006 he was global control systems R&D manager for Instron, manufacturers of materials and structural testing systems.

Professor Plummer is Past-Chair of the Institution’s Mechatronics Informatics & Control Group and the UK Automatic Control Council, and is Associate Editor of both the International Journal of Fluid Power and Control Engineering Practice.   He is Chairman of the Global Fluid Power Society.

Head of Hardware Engineering, Global Engineering - UK, Elekta Limited

Professor of Mechatronic Systems Abertay University

Consultant, J R Hughes Limited

Lecturer, Robotics & Intelligent Manufacturing, Queen's University Belfast

Dr Jin is a Reader in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast.  He has been working in the school since 2007.

His research interest is in parallel kinematic machines, robotics, intelligent manufacturing, digital lean manufacturing, high performance machining, and production management.  Dr Jin has been a principal investigator or co-investigator for a number of research programmes, funded by EPSRC, Innovate UK, Royal Academy of Engineering, EU H2020, Invest Northern Ireland and industry (eg, EADS/Airbus and Bombardier Aerospace Belfast).

He is a member of EPSRC Early Career Forum on Manufacturing Research, member of UK Robotic Mission, and chair of robotics committee of IFToMM UK (2014-present).  He is an editorial board member of International Journal of Robotics & Mechatronics and Journal of Robotic & Mechatronic Systems.  He has been an organising chair or committee member 20+ international conferences such as ICRA2017.  Dr Jin has published 90+ high quality technical papers.

He is a chartered engineer, and a member of IMechE and IEEE.

Director, Rolls-Royce
University Technology Centre in Control & Monitoring Systems Engineering 
University of Sheffield

Alison completed a thin sandwich course in Mechanical Engineering at University of Bradford.

Following a period as a Production Engineer at a local SME, she took up a post as a research engineer on the Geometric Modelling Project at the University of Leeds where she began a career-long interest in engineering design.  This included editorship of the first edition of ISO 10303-41 and completion of a PhD on relationships in product data.

Alison is currently a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Leeds.  Her research focus lies in design descriptions and the ways in which they support engineering design and innovation processes both within organisations and across supply networks.  She is Director of the Leeds Socio-Technical Centre and represents IMechE on the BSI Technical Product Realisation committee (TPR/1) which is responsible for the development of BS8888, BS8887 and related standards.

Innovation and Growth Leader, BAE Systems

Professor of Electronic & Computer Engineering, Brunel University London

Asoke Nandi received the degree of PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College).  He held academic positions in several universities, including Oxford, Imperial College London, Strathclyde, and Liverpool, as well as Finland Distinguished Professorship.  In 2013, he moved to Brunel University London to become the Chair and Head of Electronic and Computer Engineering. 

Professor Nandi is a Visiting Professor at Tongji University (China) and an Adjunct Professor at University of Calgary (Canada). 

In 1983, Professor Nandi co-discovered the three fundamental particles known as W+, W- and Z0 , providing the evidence for the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces, for which the Nobel Committee for Physics in 1984 awarded the prize to his two team leaders for their decisive contributions.  His current research interests lie in the areas of signal processing and machine learning, with applications to machine condition monitoring, communications, gene expression data, functional magnetic resonance data, and biomedical data.  He has made many fundamental theoretical and algorithmic contributions to many aspects of signal processing and machine learning.  He has much expertise in “Big Data”, dealing with heterogeneous data, and extracting information from multiple datasets obtained in different laboratories and different times.

Professor Nandi has authored 570 technical publications, including 230 journal papers as well as four books, entitled Automatic Modulation Classification: Principles, Algorithms and Applications (Wiley, 2015), Integrative Cluster Analysis in Bioinformatics (Wiley, 2015), Blind Estimation Using Higher-Order Statistics (Springer, 1999), and Automatic Modulation Recognition of Communications Signals (Springer, 1996).  The h-index of his publications is 70 (Google Scholar) and ERDOS number is 2.

Professor Nandi is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (UK) and of 7 other institutions.  Amongst the many awards he received are:

• Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (USA) Heinrich Hertz Award (2012)
• Glory of Bengal Award for his outstanding achievements in scientific research (2010)
• Water Arbitration Prize of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (UK), (1999)
• Mountbatten Premium of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (UK) (1998).

Professor Nandi is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2018-2019).

Engineering Team Leader, Airbus

Sanjiv joined Airbus in 1997 as Head of Modelling & Simulation Group, responsible for delivering design analyses, validation and verification for the Landing Gear Systems department. In 2005, he was appointed the role of Technical Expert for Modelling & Simulation and has been leading research and application of Engineering Mathematics and Uncertainty Quantification & Management (UQ&M) in aircraft design.

He has led systems engineering work packages on European (FP7) and UK (ATI) collaborative projects. More recently, he is leading the application of UQ&M in structural, control systems and mechatronics analyses.

Dr Sharma obtained BSc (Eng) in Mechanical Engineering, MSc in Control & Signal Processing and PhD in Applied mathematics. He is a fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Application.

Head, Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems Centre, Cranfield University

Graduate Engineer in Defence, University of Salford

Nick is a graduate engineer in the Civil Service, with an MSc in Robotics & Automation from the University of Salford.  He is currently serving as the young member representative on the Mechatronics, Informatics & Control Group (MICG), his role to ensure that the Young Member viewpoint is considered when the MICG makes its decisions and plans.  As such, he regularly engages with the other Young Member boards and panels within the IMechE to share ideas and make the MICG’s aims and objectives known within the Young Member community.