Philip Withers
Philip Withers FRS, FREng, FRAes, FIMMM read Natural Sciences and did his PhD at Cambridge in the 1980’s focusing on mental matrix composites for his PhD. In 1989 he became a lecturer in Materials Science and Metallurgy at Cambridge before being appointed to a Chair at The University of Manchester in 1998. He is particularly interested in how things fail and how to design materials that are stronger, operate at higher temperatures or will last longer. In 2008 he established the Henry Moseley X-ray Imaging Facility which is now the most comprehensive suite of3D X-ray imaging systems in the UK. In September 2012 he became the founding Director of the $100m BP-International Centre for Advanced Materials and in 2017 the Chief Scientist for the £235m Sir Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials. He is a Fellow of Royal Society (2016), the Royal Academy of Engineering (2005), the Royal Aeronautical Society (2008) and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (2004). In 2016 he became the first Regis Professor of Materials in the UK and is now Chief Scientist for the newly establish Henry Royce Institute for advanced Materials. He is a passionate communicator for science.