New Dean to lead Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Southampton

Professor Bashir M. Al-Hashimi has been appointed as the new Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Southampton.

Professor Al-Hashimi, Associate Dean (Research) for the Faculty, will succeed Professor Dame Wendy Hall as Dean on 1 August 2014. Dame Wendy will take on a leading role in the University’s new Web Science Institute to be formally launched in June, as well as the new Centre for Doctoral Training in Web Science Innovation, which was recently announced by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). “It is a great privilege to be appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering,” said Professor Al-Hashimi who previously served as Deputy Head of Education, Electronics and Computer Science at Southampton (2005-2008). “This is an exciting time to lead the Faculty, which I fully expect to contribute strongly towards achieving the University’s ambitious plans for distinction, globalisation and growth. “I look forward to building on the world-leading reputation of the Faculty in providing an environment that supports and rewards excellence in all its endeavours, inspiring both staff and students to achieve their full potential, and enabling all of its academic units and institutes to succeed and prosper,” he continued.

Congratulating Professor Al-Hashimi on his appointment, Vice-Chancellor Professor Don Nutbeam said: “I am delighted to confirm Bashir’s appointment as the new Dean of Physical Sciences and Engineering. His outstanding track record in research, his clear commitment to education, and equally strong reputation in the electronics industry brings a formidable mix of experience to the post of Dean.

“I would also like to pay tribute to Dame Wendy for her leadership and contribution to the University’s success as a member of our Executive Group. She is one of the world’s trailblazers in Web Science and we look forward to her continued work in pushing out the boundaries in this field through the Web Science Institute and our Centre for Doctoral Training,” he continued.

The founder and director of the University’s Pervasive Systems Research Centre, Professor Al-Hashimi has a worldwide reputation for research into energy-efficient, reliable and testable digital hardware with a strong track record of innovation in system-level power management and power-constrained testing of systems-on-chip used in handheld devices. He is currently a member of the REF2014 panel Electrical, Electronic Engineering, Materials and Metrology.

Professor Al-Hashimi leads the £5.6 million EPSRC programme called PRiME – Power-efficient, Reliable, Many-core Embedded systems. The project brings together four world-leading universities and five industrial partners, to address major research challenges in future high performance and low-energy embedded computing systems.

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

In 2013, Professor Al-Hashimi was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering joining the country’s most eminent and distinguished engineers. In January this year, Professor Al-Hashimi was awarded a highly prestigious Wolfson Research Merit Award by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the British Computer Society – the Chartered Institute for IT - and a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

In an industrial and academic career spanning 25 years, Professor Al-Hashimi has authored 300 publications, 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 32 PhD theses), many of whom now hold senior positions in industry and academia worldwide.