Southampton Professor elected Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering

Professor Bashir Al-Hashimi, Associate Dean Research in Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Southampton, has been elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for his contribution to low-power design and test of mobile computing systems. Fellows of the Academy comprise the country’s most eminent and distinguished engineers and are recognised for their excellence in the science, art and practice of engineering.

Bashir said: "I am delighted to receive this prestigious honour. I would like to pay tribute to my past and present PhD students and Postdoctoral Researchers, and my industrial collaborators without whom none of these achievements would have been possible”.

Bashir is the founder and director of the Pervasive Systems Research Centre in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) at the University of Southampton. He also has a long association with the innovative microelectronics group ARM, which sponsors his professorial chair and for whom he is the co-director of the ARM-ECS research centre.

He has conducted extensive research into methods, algorithms and design automation tools for low-power design and test of microelectronic and embedded computing systems.

In an industrial and academic career spanning 25 years, Bashir has authored 270 publications; and authored, co-authored and edited five research books in topics ranging from electronic circuits simulation to low-power test of integrated circuits, system-on-chip to energy-efficient embedded systems. He is very proud of the career development of his students - successfully supervising 30 PhD theses - many of whom now hold senior positions in industry and academia worldwide.

He has a worldwide reputation for research into energy-efficient, reliable and testable digital hardware and has a strong track record of innovation in system-level power management and power-constrained testing of systems-on-chip used in handheld devices. He has recently become the project leader for a £5.6 million EPSRC programme called PRiME that brings together four UK universities to investigate the design and implementation of future high-performance energy-efficient and dependable embedded systems with many-core processors.

Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering Professor Dame Wendy Hall welcomed the news. She said: “Bashir’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering is excellent news and reflects and recognises his leading research and the contribution he has made to the technological development of low power mobile devices.”

Bashir is one of 60 new Fellows elected to the Royal Academy in 2013. Sir John Parker GBE FREng, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, said: "We warmly welcome our new Fellows to the Academy. With their expertise, knowledge and vision we will continue to strengthen our ambition of providing authoritative, impartial, and expert engineering advice to government and to develop the Academy's growing impact and influence on a global stage."

ECS Alumnus (PhD,1973) Dr Richard Greaves, Technical Director of the Meggitt group of companies, was also elected a Fellow of the Academy. Richard Greaves joined the Meggitt group with the takeover of his company Vibro-Meter, and has served as the Chief Executive of both the Aerospace Systems Division and the more recently-formed Sensing Systems Division. From a background in the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Winfrith, Dr Greaves was instrumental in the development of piezoelectric transducers and other kinds of sensors used in condition monitoring systems for complex equipment such as aero-engines; these are now finding application across a range of business and industry in monitoring diverse high-value assets. Dr Greaves is a member of the ECS Industrial Advisory Board.