THE University of Huddersfield’s Professor Simon Iwnicki has been elected a Fellow of one of the world’s most exclusive and prestigious engineering bodies. It will help ensure that rail innovation receives high priority.
Professor Iwnicki is Director of the Institute of Railway Research, which is based at the University. Its extensive facilities will soon be augmented by new rigs that will test key issues such as passenger ride comfort and the performance of pantographs.
Now, he is to join the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering, which was formed in 1976, with the backing of the HRH The Duke of Edinburgh. Its earliest Fellows included jet engine visionary Sir Frank Whittle, design guru Sir Ove Arup, radar pioneer Sir George MacFarlane and bouncing bomb inventor Sir Barnes Wallis.
Election to the Academy is by invitation only with about 50 Fellows elected each year after they have been nominated by existing Fellows. The Fellows are elected for their “outstanding and continuing contributions to the profession”. Professor Iwnicki will have the honour officially conferred on him at a special function held later this year in November.
He is the third University of Huddersfield engineer to receive a Fellowship. The metrology researcher Professor Dame Xiangqian (Jane) Jiang was elected in 2012 and the University’s Vice-Chancellor, electrical engineer Professor Bob Cryan, became a Fellow in 2016.
