A new Head of Department for Electrical and Electronic Engineering

We are pleased to welcome Professor Tim Green as our new Head of Department.

Professor Green has held several senior roles within the Department and Imperial, including Director of Undergraduate Studies and Director of Imperial’s Energy Futures Lab, and has led major inter-university research collaborations.

He takes over the post from Professor Eric Yeatman, who was Head of Department for almost ten years. Eric has joined the University of Glasgow as Vice-Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering, and will also remain a member of our department as a PhD supervisor.

Professor Green said: “I’m extremely grateful to Eric for his dedication and leadership over the past decade. He set out to grow our presence in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence through targeted recruitment and through his foundational and leadership roles in Imperial's I-X initiative. The Department is in a great state of health in education, research and entrepreneurship and Eric’s influence on all of these has been significant. His tenure included the severe challenges posed by the COVID pandemic. Our community's response to adapting our teaching and research to these unprecedented conditions was outstanding, and Eric’s calm and pragmatic leadership was pivotal to this. We thank him for the legacy he leaves us, and wish him all the very best in his new role.”

Meet Professor Green

Tim first joined our department as an undergraduate in 1982, graduating with a BSc(Eng) in 1986. He moved to Herriot Watt University in Edinburgh to complete his PhD in power electronics and lectured there for four years. He returned to London to take up a lectureship here in 1994, and became Professor of Electrical Power Engineering in 2005.

“We have a great community of staff and it's our people who make the Department what it is. I'm very much looking forward working with talented colleagues and strengthening collaboration and community wherever I can." Professor Tim Green

His research interests are in how electronic power converters aid the control and flexibility of power grids and, in turn, facilitate deep decarbonisation. He has pioneered work on stability of microgrids, on circuit and control innovation in High Voltage DC power converters (with GE Vernova), in enhancing control and transfer capability of low voltage networks (with UK Power Networks) and, as his present focus, assurance of stability in transmission networks dominated by inverter-interfaced resources (with National Energy System Operator, NESO.

Tim is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and of the Learned Society of Wales. He chairs NESO’s Engineering Advisory Council and is a member of the advisory council of the Electric Power Research Institute.

Tim’s most recent role at Imperial was as Academic Lead for Sustainability, co-leading the sustainability hub to tackle Imperial’s greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations across scopes 1, 2 and 3. This involved working with colleagues in Properties and Major Projects on plans to move our heat network to heat-pump use and retire our gas-fired combined heat and power plant that sits in the basement of the EEE building, and also assisting in the development and communication of the university's new policies on travel, procurement and buildings. He established an expert advisory group to tap the extensive expertise across Imperial’s research community on biodiversity, water management, life-cycle analysis, energy technologies and the built environment.

“It is a privilege to serve as EEE's Head of Department and I am eager to get started. We have a great community of staff across the many teams in the department and it's our people who make the Department what it is. I'm very much looking forward working with talented colleagues and strengthening collaboration and community wherever I can.

As a former student and a former DUGS, I feel invested in providing a supportive and enriching education environment and conveying the excitement to be found at the leading edge of our discipline. It's not only our topics that evolve but also our methods of teaching and mentoring. We have students from many parts of the world and I've always found it interesting to learn from them. I'm also determined that we pay close attention to widening participation among our home students.

As a department we have many important relationships - with our friends and colleagues across the university, our alumni, our research partners in industry and in policy-making. Much of our reputation is built on our research excellence and how that research has impact academically, industrially and in advancing our education offering. We're a broad department with excellence across healthcare, robotics, AI, control, communications, image and data analytics, sensor systems, sustainability and more. I look forward to helping build and support that excellence and foster the next generation of thought-leaders, innovators, problem-solvers and entrepreneurs. Leading a department with that mission is very exciting."