President of the Academy since 2014, Dame Ann is professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Cambridge, where she served as head of the department of engineering from 2009-14 and is currently a deputy vice-chancellor.
She is admitted to the Order of Merit for her exceptional service in advancing the field of mechanical engineering, with almost 40 years of research on aeronautics and energy, most recently in developing low noise aircraft.
Outside of her own world-leading research, Dame Ann has an influential leadership role across the engineering and academic sectors. She serves as the first female president of the RAE, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Engineering and the French Academy of Sciences. She also sits as a non-executive member of the board of Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and is a non-executive director of BP.
In 2015, Dame Ann published The Dowling Review of Business-University Research Collaborations, which identified the complex mechanisms in place to encourage collaboration between academia and industry in the UK and called for a simplification of these systems in order to reap the full potential of the excellent research being done in UK universities.
The Order of Merit recognises exceptional service towards the advancement of the arts, learning, literature and science, and is limited to just 24 living recipients. Dame Ann joins another Academy Fellow, the engineer Sir James Dyson CBE, in being admitted to the order on 31 December 2015. The third new member, surgeon The Lord Darzi of Denham PC KBE, is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy.
Other Fellows recognised in the New Year’s Honours list include John Baxter, formerly group head of engineering at BP and Professor David Lane, professor of autonomous systems engineering at Heriot Watt University, who become Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, and Professor Roger Kemp, Professorial Fellow in the engineering department at the University of Lancaster, who is made a Member of the Order of the British Empire.
