News Release

Imperial College London receives Queen's Anniversary Prize for excellence in engineering research

Grant and Award Announcement

Imperial College London

Imperial College London has won a Queen's Anniversary Prize for excellence in the field of process systems engineering. The medal will be awarded by Her Majesty The Queen on Wednesday 19 February in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.

The Centre for Process Systems Engineering, an Imperial-based joint research centre involving Imperial and University College London, develops novel solutions to problems in the process and manufacturing industries.

Process systems engineering technology is used across a range of industrial scales, from helping to maximise the productivity of pan-European businesses, to micro-level work on increasing the efficiency of molecules in chemical processes. It can be used to design virtual factories inside a computer, allowing tests on safety, cost-effectiveness, waste-minimisation and energy efficiency to be made before it is built in order to optimise performance.

The Centre at Imperial has pioneered computer based process optimisation techniques, allowing billions of process options and configurations to be considered until the best design is found.

Aspects of this technology are now used by companies including ICI, BP, Shell and AstraZeneca, all members of the industrial research consortium which was set up to ensure that academic research remains relevant to the needs of industry.

Professor John Perkins FREng, Principal of Imperial's Faculty of Engineering, said:

"The Centre justly prides itself on the quality and relevance of its research, and on its ability to transfer the results of leading edge research into industrial practice. This award is a tremendous tribute to the hard work of a large number of people, both within the Centre and in the many external organisations who have provided strong support over many years."

Future projects include network optimisation in the water industry, the design and operation of vaccine and energy supply chains, and the application of process systems technology to biological systems.

The Centre's work ranges from fundamental research to technology transfer, and supports key business processes from identification of market need to product design, plant and supply chain configuration, enterprise management, production scheduling, and process control and monitoring. Important components of all work carried out by the Centre are the testing of theory on realistic examples and demonstration on industrial problems.

Now in its 14th year of operation, the Centre has a vibrant forward programme of research relevant to the needs of the new process industries, and a continuing commitment to transfer its technology to industry. It continues to demonstrate best practice in linking fundamental interdisciplinary university-based research to industrial practice.

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