|
|
Here you can find out a little bit more about (most of) us, where we've come from and the various routes we've taken to get to where we are today. The page is divided into Staff and National Coordinating Committee members.
Dr
Stuart Parkinson began his career studying for a degree in physics and electronic
engineering. During an industrial placement, he worked on military engineering
projects, and this caused him to question the ethics of his career path. On
completing his degree, he changed direction and enrolled for a PhD in mathematical
modelling of global climate change at Lancaster University. After obtaining
his doctorate, he worked on a number of voluntary programmes in environmental
and social areas, both in the UK and abroad. Stuart then took a postdoctoral
post at the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at the University of Surrey,
where his research mainly involved work on climate and energy policy, and environmental
systems analysis. During this time he became an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and provided advice to UK negotiators to the
UN climate change convention. He then spent a year working for Friends of The
Earth, co-ordinating research and policy work highlighting the link between
environmental problems and social injustice.
Stuart became Executive Director of SGR in 2003, having spent the previous five years volunteering on SGR's National Co-ordinating Committee. He is co-author of a book on the Kyoto Protocol, lead editor of both the acclaimed SGR report Soldiers in the Laboratory and SGR's series of ethical careers publications, and has authored many scientific papers.
Dr Chris Langley has worked as SGR's part-time Research Officer since 2003, with his main focus being the issue of the military involvement with science and technology. He is the author of the SGR report Soldiers in the laboratory and also the ethical careers briefing Scientists or soldiers? Career choice, ethics and the military.
Chris is a freelance consultant and writer (operating as ScienceSources) and has undertaken a variety of projects for non-profit organisations in Europe and North America. He has more than twenty two years experience as a science communicator and facilitator for both lay and academic audiences. His first degree is from University College London in physiology and neurobiology and a PhD from the University of Cambridge where he also held a post-doctoral research post in neurobiology. He has held senior posts as Communications Manager, at the Leverhulme Trust and was Head of Information Services at the Novartis Foundation, during which time he established the Media Resource Service which widened and improved the access to science, medicine and technology for those working in the media throughout Europe. He was science advisor to the University of Cambridge, for National Science Week in 1999-2000.
Chris has made numerous presentations and given invited lectures on science communication, ethical science and the military influence in science, technology and engineering.
Dr
Philip Webber has been Chair of SGR
since its creation in 1992 (except for 2001-2). His current
paid post is in Kirklees Metropolitan Council, West Yorkshire where he heads
a £6.2m ($10m) per annum programme of renewable energy, energy conservation,
grants and the Kirklees Council Eco-Management and Auditing System (EMAS).
Philip has written widely on environmental and military issues including several books critical of European Defence Strategy and arms, nuclear weapons and civil defence, and missile defence technology. He spent 12 years as a research scientist at Imperial College, where he gained his PhD in surface science and first became involved in the UK peace movement during the Cold War of the the 1980s. From 1981, Philip was active in Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA), one of SGR's founder organisations, and during this period co-authored London After the Bomb, and Crisis Over Cruise. He was one of the organisers of the London Nuclear Warfare Tribunal (1983). In 1990 he wrote New Defence Strategies for the 1990's and took the opportunity to work on positive action to better the human condition through work in the environmental field - he now leads one of the UK's leading and award-winning local environment programmes.
Philip counts himself lucky that he has been able to turn his main concerns into a career. His relaxations include gardening, skywatching and racket sports.
Kate
Macintosh studied architecture in Edinburgh after which she worked for 2 years
in Scandinavia. On returning to UK in 1964 she worked for a short time for Denys
Lasden on the National Theatre project. Most of her subsequent career
was in Local government, firstly designing housing in the London Boroughs of
Southwark and Lambeth, and later with East Sussex and Hampshire County Architects.
Since 1995 she has been in private practice in Finch Macintosh Architects, focusing
on sustainable building construction.
Kate has served on the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Council and was a Vice President for Public Affairs in 1996. She was the first chair person of the Women's Architect Group. As Chair of Architects for Peace (A4P) from its launch in 1981, she used her links with the RIBA to get nuclear and civil defence issues debated in the Instutute. The culmination of this was in 1983 when the RIBA asked A4P to co-organise a debate on nuclear shelters as part of their official programme. As a result of this meeting the RIBA prepared its own report, published in 1990, on the effects of nuclear war on the built environment, along the lines of the British Medical Association's report advising the public on the medical effects of nuclear war.
In 1984 Kate co-authored the booklet Sussex after the Bomb of which 2,000 copies were printed. In 1985, A4P members including Kate collaborated with an eminent US architect from New York to set up the international peace organisation now called ARC Peace.
In 1991 Kate became Vice-chair and later Chair (except for the years 1997-8) of Architects and Engineers for Social Responsibility (AESR), formed out of the merger between A4P and Engineers for Social Responsibility. During this time she was involved in the publication of the briefing papers on Sustainability, Energy, Personal Transport, Housing and Waste Management.
Kate received her MBE for services to Architecture in 1987, having been nominated by RIBA.
Dr
Patrick Nicholson initially studied engineering, and was subsequently drawn
to aspects of engineering applied to medicine because of their direct human
benefits. He worked as a medical physicist in the NHS from 1989-1994, and obtained
his PhD in medical physics in 1994. Since then he has worked as a researcher
in Europe and the USA, including a spell at Harvard Medical School, and has
published over 50 academic articles.
Currently Patrick combines a part-time position as senior researcher and Docent at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland with a diverse range of voluntary commitments in the UK which include community work, social and political activism, and educational work with children. His experience outside the academic world also includes extensive work within the co-operative movement, including co-founding a housing co-op in 1997, and serving as Treasurer of Radical Routes (a national secondary co-operative) from 2002-2006. He is involved in a number of grassroots science and environmental initiatives, and has an active interest in small scale renewable energy.
Alasdair
Beal is a chartered civil and structural engineer, working for consulting engineers
in Leeds.
After graduation (Glasgow) he worked initially on long span bridge design at Freeman Fox and Partners in London before moving to design factories, schools and houses at WG Curtin & Partners. Since moving to Leeds Alasdair has worked on a wide variety of projects, from small domestic to major commercial buildings and has investigated problems ranging from cracks in houses to fires, floods and landslides. A particular area of current interest is work on renovating and converting historic buildings. He has carried out research on various aspects of structural design, engineering and also construction health and safety, with over 20 published papers, including an account of the life of Thomas Young (of Young's Modulus and Young's Fringes).
Before joining SGR Alasdair was a member of AESR and its predecessor organisation Engineers for Nuclear Disarmament. He has been a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) since the 1970s and used to design badges for Leeds CND (including the legendary 'Well-Meaning Guardian Readers Against The Bomb').
His current interests within SGR are nuclear weapons, alternative energy, transport and assisting with editing the SGR Newsletter.
Professor
Roy Butterfield graduated from London University in 1949 with a 1st Class Honours
degree in Civil Engineering; he obtained a DIC in concrete technology from
Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, in 1950.
Roy spent two years on overseas service in East Africa, as a Commissioned Officer in the Royal Engineers. After eight years' construction management in Civil Engineering and Building, he joined the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Southampton in 1963, specialising in Geotechnical Engineering. In 1974 he gained a DSc from the University of Southampton, where he was appointed Professor of Soil Mechanics in 1976 and then became Head of Department from 1979-1989.
He played a leading role in developing MEng (4 year) undergraduate engineering courses in the UK; initiated schemes for such students to spend their final year studying full-time in France. Roy is a pioneer of Boundary Element Methods; consultant on Venetian subsidence and Professor (Emeritus) of Civil Engineering, University of Southampton, UK. His main publications are Piled and Pad Foundations, Mechanics of Mohr-Coulomb Materials, Electro-osmosis and Dimensional Analysis. He has supervised 19 successful PhD Theses; authored/co-authored over 100 technical publications and 8 books. He was honorary Editor Géotechnique from 1994 -1996.
Dr
Alan Cottey is convenor of SGR's study group Population, Consumption and Values,
and he also help with SGR's work on many other fronts.
Alan was formerly a lecturer in Physics at the University of East Anglia, where his research area was condensed matter. He taught many of the branches of physics but especially chose to teach nuclear physics because, in academic physics, nuclear weapons comprised an elephant in the corner. After some years, he concluded that, within traditional science education, simply drawing attention to this elephant and studying it was insufficient. There were deeper and more general problems which led him to introduce a course for natural science students on Science, Values and Ethics.
Since retiring Alan has continued his connection with UEA, as a Fellow, active in the academic and public interest aspects of the responsible conduct and use of science. It is important to Alan to make this work, his SGR activities, his support of peace-environment-justice activists, and his own life (especially his ecological footprint) as seamless as he can. One of the projects in which he is engaged in this seamless way is the promotion of openness, in Open Science and, more generally, Open Knowledge.
Dr
Tim Foxon did his PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge,
before a growing awareness of the severity of environmental impacts from human
activities led him to switch to research on environmental systems and policy.
He spent nine years as an academic researcher at Imperial College London, where
his research covered urban energy and water systems, ecological footprinting,
renewable energy and sustainable innovation policy.
He is currently at the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research (4CMR) at the University of Cambridge, undertaking research on energy modelling and policy as part of the UK Energy Research Centre.
He was Secretary of SGR from 2000-7, with responsibility for organising committee meetings, and assisting the other officers with the management of the organisation. He is the author of the SGR ethical careers briefing Cleaner technologies: a positive choice and and has given several talks on this issue.
Dave
Hookes is an honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Computer Science Department
at Liverpool University. He holds a degree in Natural Sciences and an MSc in
Digital Electronic Engineering. Dave has a doctorate in Molecular Biology.
Dave has carried out research into: Molecular structure of bio-membranes; Physics of motile protein mechanisms; Statistical mechanics of membrane transport; Ultra-thin molecular films for bio-sensing; Robot tactile sensing; Computer-interactive physics workstation. He is currently researching: How to save the planet from the threat of global warming; renewable energy technologies; application of ideas from physics to political economy and computer networks; Computer-interactive educational technology.
He was a founder member of The British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS) and a member of Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA).
Patricia
Hughes originally trained as a secretary, but has spent most of her working
life in the computing industry. She worked at first as a data centre operator/manager
for Oxford University, but then gradually moved into programming. In 1982, she
joined Oxford-based Telecomputing's Development group (and also joined Electronics
and Computing for Peace, an early component of SGR) and was part of an early
unsuccessful attempt to embed Artificial Intelligence (AI) into "normal",
in this case transaction processing, systems. Patricia had become very enthusiastic
about the technology and possibilities of AI and so in 1990 she moved on to
take a job with AI, and later Data Mining, company Integral Solutions Ltd where
she was involved in various EU projects both as technician and as project manager.
Since ISL was a small company, she was able to take on other roles such as Systems
Administrator, Web Manager and Technical Support Manager.
In 1998, Patricia left ISL and indeed regular employment. Since that time, she has developed her web skills and in early 2001 joined SGR's web team, eventually becoming the main website manager. She manages a Sustainable Communities consultancy website, an alternative political party member's website and a rock combo's site. She also works as a facilitator for English Language training courses in Budapest.
Apart from computing in its many forms, Patricia is also interested in singing, listening to music (especially jazz) and personal development.
Martin Quick is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer having studied engineering
at Cambridge University and completed practical engineering training in the
Rolls Royce car division and in GEC heavy engineering works. He spent much
of his career in industry on the energy supply side, but since early retirement
has done some consultancy on energy demand issues, particularly on energy
efficiency of buildings.
His particular concerns are climate change and potential conflicts over diminishing oil supplies, and he has an interest in all aspects of energy supply and use. He has written reports and articles for Architects & Engineers for Social Responsibility (AESR) and SGR on energy and transport issues.
He was vice chair of AESR and a committee member for a number of years. He was for a time chair of a small local organisation working under various government job creation schemes building a cycle trail and installing domestic energy efficiency measures.
His interests include vintage forms of transport (cars, ships and railways), camping and walking. His hope is for a world for his children and grandchildren that is at peace and can continue to support a huge variety of life.
Harry Tsoumpas obtained his doctorate from Imperial College, London, in 2008. His main research interest focuses on the quantification with positron and single photon emission tomography in biological imaging. His main degree is in Physics and he also holds a masters degree in the field of Biomedical Engineering and a doctorate. At the moment, he is working at Imperial College London as PET/SPECT/CT physicist.
Harry has served as student representative of SGR since 2006. His main project is the promotion of ethical science to several student groups and individuals across the country.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Send
correspondence about
the web-site to webmanager@sgr.org.uk | |||