Honorary Fellows, Visitors, Guests and Others

Dr Tim J. Aspinall is a Fellow at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh. He works in the fields of fire safety, fire science and materials science, specialising in complex defence and security environments. He holds a BSc (2016), an MSc (2017) and a PhD (2021) from the University of Portsmouth, Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, respectively. He received an Honorary Fellowship from the University of Edinburgh in 2022. Tim has held previous posts, including a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship and a funded PhD Studentship sponsored by the UK Ministry of Defence at the University of Edinburgh. Before this, Tim worked as a Consultant Engineer for BP plc.

PhD - Fire Science and Engineering, The University of Edinburgh

• 1978 BEng (1st class), Civil Engineering, University of Liverpool
• 1990 MA, University of Oxford
• 1982 PhD, University of Liverpool
• 2007 DSc, University of Oxford

• 1988 European Engineer, Eur Ing
• 2014 Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering, FREng
• 1985 Chartered Engineer, CEng
• 2003 Fellow of Institution of Civil Engineers, FICE
• 2015 Fellow of Royal Society of Edinburgh, FRSE

• Coastal and Offshore Engineering
• Environmental Fluid Mechanics
• Marine Power Resource Assessment

• Alistair was Head of Civil & Environmental Engineering at University College Cork from 2011-13, where he was the Founding Director of the SFI Centre for Marine Renewable Energy Ireland.
• Alistair Borthwick is Professor of Applied Hydrodynamics at The University of Edinburgh, an Emeritus Fellow at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and holds Adjunct Professorships at Peking University and NUI Galway.
• Alistair was the founding Chairman of the Editorial Board of the ICE Journal of Engineering and Computational Mechanics.
• Professor Borthwick's research interests include environmental fluid mechanics, flood risk management, coastal processes, offshore engineering, and marine renewable energy.
• Since 1998, he has collaborated with Peking University on all material fluxes in large rivers, and water and wastewater treatment technologies.
• Alistair Borthwick has almost 40 years' engineering experience. He helped design the Hutton Tension Leg Platform, which won the Queen's Award for Technological Achievement in 1984.
• He was previously Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford, where he worked for 21 years from 1990-2011.

Dr Robin Wallace graduated in 1976 and has been involved in power generation and renewable energy throughout his career.

Until 1984 he worked in the Project Engineering Group of Parsons Peebles Motors and Generators, where ultimately he was an Assistant Chief Project Engineer responsible for turnkey power generation and discrete speed drive projects up to 25MVA in capacity, primarily hydro power plants.

Robin moved to University in 1986, where his research interests include: network integration of distributed renewable energy generation and marine energy. He is Principal Investigator and Finance Lead of the EPSRC SuperGen Marine Energy Consortium.

Robin is a Chartered Engineer, a Member of the IEE and a board member of the Scottish Energy and Environment Foundation.

• Chartered Engineer
• Member of the IEE

• Principal Investigator and Finance Lead of the EPSRC SuperGen Marine Energy Consortium

I was appointed as Head of the School of Engineering, and Professor of Tomographic Imaging, at the University of Edinburgh in 2013.

Having studied Physics as an undergraduate and PhD student at the University of Glasgow, I spent six and a half years working as a post-doctoral researcher in High Energy Particle Physics at Glasgow, Manchester, CERN (Geneva) and DESY (Hamburg).

In my ten years in R&D at the Royal Dutch/Shell Group, I worked in combustion and explosion hazards and lubricant formulation, and was the founding Group Leader of the specialist Engine Measurement group.

I was appointed Professor of Industrial Tomography at UMIST (later to become the University of Manchester) in 1996, becoming Head of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (1999-2002).

I chaired the UK Professors & Heads of Electrical Engineering (2003-2005).

For 3 years (2010-2013), I was Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Manchester.

I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2009.

I have taught most undergraduate year-groups, in measurements, errors, instrumentation electronics and a.c. circuit theory.

My research since 1996 has extended industrial tomography to provide specific chemical contrast in operating engineering plant, and developed electrical impedance tomography for medical applications, collaborating intensively with users in both academia and industry. Today, these topics continue to be my main research interests in Edinburgh, as part of the Agile Tomography research group within the Institute for Digital Communications.

• 1976 Bachelor of Science, 1st, University of Glasgow
• 1980 Doctor of Philosophy, PhD, University of Glasgow

• 1987 Chartered Physicist, CPhys
• 2000 Chartered Engineer, CEng
• 2009 Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering, FREng

• Industrial Tomography
• Electrical Impedance Tomography

Alan Murray is Professor of Neural Electronics and Assistant Principal, Academic Support. He introduced the Pulse Stream method for analogue neural VLSI in 1985. Alan’s interests are now primarily in implanted silicon chips for biomedical applications.

He led the £5.2M IMPACT (Implantable Microsystems for Personalised And-Cancer Treatment) project, funded by an EPSRC Programme Grant and enjoys teaching first year engineering/electronics and third year Electromagnetics courses. IMPACT produced proof-of-concept results that will be taken forward in two areas – cancer and wound-healing, as "OPTIMIST" (Optimised, Personalised Treatment & Intervention: Microsystems, Implanted Sensors & Therapeutics).

Alan is a Fellow of IET, IEEE and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Principal Fellow of the HEA and has published over 360 academic papers. Alan’s degrees are in Physics (BSc and PhD – both from the University of Edinburgh). Subsequently, he has done this...

• 1978-80: Research Fellow, Solid – State Physics, Chalk River Nuclear Laboratories: supported by SERC NATO and Canadian NERC fellowships
• 1980-81: Research Fellow, Department of Physics, University of Edinburgh, leading the Light Scattering section of the Condensed Matter group
• 1981-84: VLSI Designer, Wolfson Microelectronics Institute
• 1984-91: Lecturer, Department of Electrical Engineering
• 1991-94: Reader, Department of Electrical Engineering
• 1994-present: Professor of Neural Electronics
• 2002-2008: Head of the Institute for Integrated Micro and Nano Systems
• 2008-2012: Head of the School of Engineering
• 2012-2015: Dean of Students, College of Science and Engineering
• 2015-2018: Head of the Institute for BioEngineering
• 2015-present: Assistant Principal, Academic Support

• B.Sc. Ph.D

• F.I.E.E., F.I.E.E.E., F.R.S.E., C.Eng., P.F.H.E.A.

• Fundamentals of Electronics, Electromagnetism,

• Outside interests : Music (especially folk music - writing, playing and listening) and wood-carving