The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced its first female President.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS will succeed Sir John Parker GBE FREng as President.

Fellows of the Academy elected Dame Ann as their first female president at the 2014 AGM. Sir John Parker GBE FREng, served as President for three years from 2011.

A world authority on combustion and acoustics, Dame Ann has been Head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge since 2009. She became a Cambridge research fellow in 1977 and has remained at the university ever since, including visiting research posts at MIT in 1999 and Caltech in 2001. In 1993, she became the Department of Engineering's first ever female professor. In 2002, she was recognised in The Queen's Birthday Honours, receiving a CBE for services to Mechanical Engineering, and again in the 2007 in the New Year's Honours List when she received a DBE for services to science. In 2011, she was awarded a UK Resource Centre award for her 'Inspiration and Leadership in Academia and Research'.


Dame Ann is a non-executive director of BP, a non-executive member of the board of BIS, a panel chair for the Research Excellence Framework and was nominated in BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour power list 2013 as one of the 100 most influential women in the country.

She said: "Being elected to lead the Royal Academy of Engineering is a great honour. There is a growing recognition of the vital importance of engineering in addressing the many challenges that face society. But there is much work to be done to ensure that UK engineering is in a position to make its optimal contribution, including the need to address our looming engineering skills gap and crucially to pursue a strategy of efficient and sustainable growth in a rebalanced economy."

(CD/IT)