Professor Nina Thornhill recognised with Nordic Process Control Award

Professor Nina Thornhill, Department of Chemical Engineering

The award recognises lasting and significant contributions to the field of process control and automation.

Professor Nina Thornhill, Professor of Process Automation in the Department of Chemical Engineering, received the Nordic Process Control Award at the 22^nd Nordic Process Control Workshop in August at the Technical University of Denmark.

I am very proud to be the recipient of this award and am pleased that other researchers have found my results useful. Professor Nina Thornhill Department of Chemical Engineering

The award recognises Professor Thornhill’s novel contributions in research to developing innovative approaches, tools and methods for process monitoring, fault diagnosis and detection and optimal operation of large-scale production facilities. 

The awarding body, the Nordic Working Group on Process Control, also recognised Professor Thornhill’s important contributions as a coordinator in several European Marie Sklodowska-Curie projects, which bring together industrial and academic partners to train early-stage researchers in the field of process automation and control.

Professor Nina Thornhill said: “I am very proud to be the recipient of this award and am pleased that other researchers have found my results useful. My career has been a lot of fun, with excellent students and wonderful collaborators from the Nordic region and elsewhere. I thank everyone who has been involved.”

Previous recipients of the award include Roger W. Sargent, founder of the Centre for Process Systems Engineering, of which Nina is a member.

Professor Thornhill is currently on secondment with the ABB Corporate Research Center in Kraków, Poland. She first joined Imperial in 1982 where she completed a Masters degree in Control Systems in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. She has worked with ICI, British Aerospace, BP, and University College London. In 2007 she returned to Imperial, this time with the Department of Chemical Engineering, as ABB/Royal Academy of Engineering Chair of Process Engineering. 

She later served in the Executive Team for the Department, and as Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of the MSc in Process Automation, Instrumentation and Control.