New Executive Dean for Science and Engineering

BeynonAustralian Top 100 engineer Professor John Beynon has been announced by Flinders University as its new Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. He will take up the position on July 1, 2016.

Welcoming the appointment, Flinders Vice-Chancellor Professor Colin Stirling said that Professor Beynon’s outstanding record as a university administrator and leading academic in the field of engineering and metallurgy make him ideally qualified to lead Science and Engineering at Flinders.

“Our Faculty of Science and Engineering has had an exciting decade of growth in terms of our courses, student numbers and infrastructure, including the establishment of our cutting-edge facilities at Tonsley, and I am certain that Professor Beynon will foster and build on this momentum,” Professor Stirling said.

“With his formidable record of collaboration with industry and his managerial experience in institutions with a strong technological focus, he is ideally suited to drive the University’s strategic aim of increasing its engagement with external businesses, industry and entrepreneurs.”

Born on the UK’s Isle of Man, Professor Beynon graduated from Sheffield with a Bachelor of Metallurgy degree (in physical metallurgy) followed by a PhD in the same department.

After postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute for Ferrous Research in Düsseldorf, Germany, he took up a lectureship and senior lectureship at Leicester University before rejoining Sheffield as a Professor, and later Head, of Mechanical Engineering.

Sabbaticals in the USA and Australia preceded moving to Australia as Dean of Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology in 2005.

He moved to the University of Adelaide as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences in 2012.

A former President of the Australian Council of Engineering Deans, he was Chair of the Global Engineering Deans Council for over two years until December 2015. A Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining in the UK, he is also a Fellow of Engineers Australia and of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE).

He has been listed in Engineers Australia’s Top 100 Most Influential Engineers in Australia for 2011-2015, and last year was awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal in the UK for services to the steel industry.

In announcing the appointment, Professor Stirling also paid tribute to the outgoing Executive Dean, Professor Warren Lawrance, who will resume his academic position at Flinders.

“I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge Professor Lawrance’s outstanding contribution to the Faculty over the past decade, his role in ably managing the Faculty’s affairs and his valuable participation in University’s senior executive management team,” he said.

 

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