Who's Who at Queen Mary
Professor Simon Gaskell
Principal
Simon Gaskell graduated from the University of Bristol and took up his first research post in 1974 at the University of Glasgow before becoming Head of the Mass Spectrometry Unit at the University of Wales College of Medicine. During that period he spent a sabbatical year at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina, USA. He returned to the USA in 1987 to become Professor of Experimental Medicine in the Baylor College of Medicine, Houston and Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology and Chemistry at the University of Houston from 1989.
Professor Gaskell joined UMIST as Professor of Mass Spectrometry in 1993, before becoming Head of Chemistry in 1999 and, following the merger of the two institutions, Associate Vice President for Research in the University of Manchester in 2004, and Vice President for Research in 2006. He joined Queen Mary as Principal in October 2009. He is also Chair of the Board of the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), and has been elected to serve as Treasurer for Universities UK, the representative organisation for UK universities, from 1 August 2012.
His research involves the development and application of state-of-the-art mass spectrometry, with particular applications in the biomedical sciences.
Professor Richard Trembath
Vice-Principal and Executive Dean (Health)
Professor Trembath trained in Medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School and undertook postgraduate studies at the Institute of Child Health, London before moving to the Department of Genetics at the University of Leicester in 1992. He was appointed Foundation Chair of Medical Genetics in Leicester in 1998. He serves on advisory and editorial boards and committees of numerous national and international journals and academic societies, and is past President of The British Society of Human Genetics.
Prior to joining Barts and The London in September 2012 Professor Trembath was the Director of the NIHR Comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and Head of the KCL Division of Genetics & Molecular Medicine at King's College London. He is an Honorary Consultant in Clinical Genetics at the Genetics Centre at Guy's Hospital; a Senior Investigator for the National Institute of Health Research; a former Clinical Academic Group Lead within King's Health Partners, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Director of the UCL Partnership Board.
Professor Morag Shiach
Vice-Principal and Executive Dean (Humanities and Social Sciences)
Morag Shiach studied Drama and Philosophy at Glasgow University. She went on to study for her Masters in Communications at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and then completed her doctorate in English at the University of Cambridge, where she was supervised by Raymond Williams. Before taking on the role of Vice-Principal and Executive Dean (HSS) she had been Vice-Principal (Teaching and Learning) and Head of the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary.
Morag Shiach's research interests are in the cultural history of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on the cultural history of modernism. Her publications include Hélène Cixous: A Politic of Writing; Modernism, Labour and Selfhood in British Literature and Culture, 1890-1930; and The Cambridge Companion to the Modernist Novel.
Professor Jeremy Kilburn
Vice-Principal and Executive Dean (Science and Engineering)
Jeremy Kilburn graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in Natural Sciences in 1983. He stayed in Cambridge to study for a PhD under the supervision of Ian Fleming, working on the chemistry of beta-silyl enolates, and completing a total synthesis of the antibiotic thienamycin. In 1986 he moved to Columbia University in New York to carry out post-doctoral studies with Clark Still, where he worked on host-guest chemistry and the development of synthetic receptors for small organic molecules. He returned to the UK in 1988 as a Lecturer at the University of Wales, Bangor and in 1990 he moved to the University of Southampton. From 2002-2007 he was the Head of the School of Chemistry, and from 2007-2010 he was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics at the University of Southampton. He joined Queen Mary in September 2010 as Professor of Organic Chemistry and Vice-Principal Science and Engineering.
He has had several research interests including organic synthesis methodology and natural product synthesis, supramolecular chemistry, and application of combinatorial chemistry to design of synthetic receptors and most recently to development of modified electrodes for bio-sensing and fuel cells.
Professor Susan Dilly
Vice-Principal (Teaching and Learning)
Susan Dilly trained at University College Hospital, London and later became a consultant histopathologist at St George's Hospital Medical School. Her strong interest in education led to her becoming the Director of Medical Education for the Hospital and the Postgraduate Dean for the Medical School. She moved to Keele University, Staffordshire in 1998 as Dean of Health to lead the successful bid for a new medical school and then implemented this as Head of the Medical School.
She joined Barts and The London Medical School in September 2006 as Director of the Institute for Health Sciences Education and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medicine. In 2010, she moved to the position of Vice Principal for Teaching and Learning for Queen Mary and continues as Professor of Pathological Sciences and Honorary Consultant Histopathologist in Barts and the London NHS Trust where she specialises in perinatal pathology. Externally she is an institutional auditor for the Quality Assurance Agency and a Board Member of the Human Tissue Authority.
Professor Bill Spence
Vice-Principal (Research)
Bill Spence took his degree in Theoretical Physics at the Australian National University and his PhD at King's College London in 1985. After postdoctoral posts at the University of Southampton, Queen Mary and Imperial College London, he held a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship at the University of Melbourne and an EPSRC Advanced Fellowship at Queen Mary. He was the first Director of the Centre for Research in String Theory, which grew rapidly in size and prominence during 2003-2009. He was then Head of Physics and Astronomy during 2009-2012, overseeing a period of major expansion.
Bill's research interests are in M-theory and string theory and their applications - most recently those originally inspired by twistor string theory. This research area has unearthed powerful new approaches to quantum field theory, gravity and string theory, ranging from twistor space formulations to novel techniques for calculating scattering amplitudes relevant to the Large Hadron Collider.
Professor Peter McOwan
Vice-Principal (External Partnerships and Public Engagement)
Peter McOwan is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary. He was appointed to the role of Vice Principal for External Partnerships and Public Engagement in January 2012.
Peter's research interests are in visual perception, mathematical models for visual processing, in particular motion, cognitive science and biologically inspired hardware and software. He has authored more than 100 papers in these areas. He recently served on the Program Committee for ACII2009, CVPR 2009 and IEEE Artificial Life and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces. Current research projects include LIREC, an EU FP7 IP, developing long-term synthetic companions, an EPSRC programme grant CHI+MED investigating design to reduce human errors in medical software and an EPSRC Partnership for Public Engagement Scheme CS4fn, an outreach project to enthuse schools about computer science research. He was also elected a National Teaching Fellow by the Higher Education Academy in 2008 and was awarded the 2011 IET Mountbatten Medal for his work in promoting Computer Science to diverse audiences.