Graduation ceremonies celebrate student achievements and honour distinguished former Dean

Hundreds of students from subjects in Physical Sciences and Engineering graduated in ceremonies on a sun-kissed Highfield Campus this month, alongside a distinguished engineer who received an honorary degree.

The University of Southampton welcomed visitors from around the world for graduation ceremonies in Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), Physics and Astronomy, and the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) on Thursday 19th July.

More than 280 ECS graduates and their families celebrated at the Nuffield Theatre, where 131 Bachelor degrees were awarded, along with 112 Masters and 44 Doctorates. In the ORC, 24 graduates received their Doctorates. The ceremonies included the second cohort of Electrical and Electronic Engineering graduates to complete their studies via the University of Southampton Malaysia.

Meanwhile at the Turner Sims concert hall, 130 Physics and Astronomy graduates marked the completion of their studies, including 32 Bachelor degrees, 70 Masters and 28 Doctorates.

Over 7,500 students are eligible to graduate across the University this year, with ceremonies running from 18 to 27 July. Alongside them, Southampton also presented honorary degrees to leading figures in the fields of computing science, public health and social care, engineered and biological materials, polar exploration and research, and nuclear physics.

Professor Tony Hey, a former Dean of Engineering at Southampton and Chief Data Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council, was made an Honorary a Doctor of Science in the ECS ceremony.

Professor Paul Lewin, Head of ECS, said: “Graduation is the highlight of our academic year and always a cause for celebration. It is very pleasing to have the opportunity to meet and thank the families and friends of our graduates, who have supported them throughout their studies. This year was particularly special as we also took the opportunity to recognise the significant contributions to ECS by Professor Tony Hey.”

Professor Tony Hey, Doctor of Science

Tony is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Royal Academy of Engineering. He has been awarded a CBE for his services to science.

He began his career as a theoretical physicist and, following research positions and professorships at Caltech, CERN and the University of Southampton, became interested in parallel computing and moved into computer science.

Tony was both Head of Department and Dean of Engineering at Southampton before leaving to lead the UK’s ground-breaking eScience initiative in 2001. In 2005, he joined Microsoft as a Vice-President and was responsible for Microsoft’s global university research engagements. In 2014, he became a Senior Data Science Fellow at the eScience Institute, University of Washington before returning to the UK in 2015 and is now Chief Data Scientist at the Science and Technology Facilities Council.