RAEng President admitted to Order of Merit in Queen’s New Year’s Honours list

The President of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS, has joined fellow engineer Sir James Dyson among the 23 other living members of the Order of Merit in the Queen’s 2016 New Year’s Honours list.

President of the Academy since 2014, Dame Ann is Professor of Mechanical of 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.

As a world authority on combustion and acoustics, 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.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling’s achievements

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 Royal Academy of Engineering, 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.

Dame Ann also chaired the widely respected 2004 report Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties, which highlighted the need for responsible regulation and research around the use of materials at an extremely small scale.

Important role engineering plays in society today

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 FREng FRS, in being admitted to the order on 31 December 2015. The third new member, surgeon The Lord Darzi of Denham PC KBE HonFREng FRS FMedSci, is an Honorary Fellow of the Academy.
Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS said:

I was surprised, delighted and very, very honoured to be appointed to the Order of Merit. I am also particularly pleased to see that both of the other new appointments to the Order of Merit are Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering, demonstrating what an important role engineering plays in society today.