Professor Dame Julia Higgins, Principal, Faculty of Engineering, will present the Annual Athena Lecture: ‘Growing Interactions: from individuals to systems in my research in the College.’

ABSTRACT: In my research areas at Imperial I moved from a focus on the behavious of individual polymer molecules to the behavior of collections of molecules, particularly in mixtures, and the consequences of this behaviour for their material properties. At the same time starting with a single PhD student I have moved through various departmental and College positions and I have watched the College change itself from a collection of walled and moated departments to an institution capable of strategic decisions and actions on the grandest scale.

BIOGRAPHY: Education, University of Oxford, BA and DPhil. Her research career has focussed on the application of scattering techniques, notably neutron scattering, to the understanding of polymer behaviour. She has explored the way that molecular organisation and motion controls material behaviour, most recently in polymer blends and mixtures.

CAREER MILESTONES: Appointed to academic staff in Imperial College 1976. Professor in 1989, Dean of the City and Guilds College (Engineering faculty) from 1993 to 1997. Currently the Chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Trustee of the National Gallery and of the Daphne Jackson Trust. Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the USA. She was made a Dame of the British Empire in 2002 and a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur in 2003. She holds honorary doctorates from a number of Universities.

She chaired the Academic Opportunities Committee from the time it was set up (as a consequence of a presentation made to the Rector’s Away Day in 1997) until 2006.

Registration required:

Yes

Free:

Yes