Ann Dowling to Receive the ASME Kate Gleason Award

NEW YORK, October 28, 2013 — Ann Dowling, CEng, CPhys, Ph.D., Sc.D., a resident of Cambridge, U.K., and head of the department of engineering and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Cambridge, will be honored by ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers). She is being recognized for significant contributions to advance gas turbine engine technology and the engineering science of combustion and acoustics; and for outstanding leadership in industry-university cooperative research and international engineering education. She will receive the Kate Gleason Award.

Established in 2011, the award recognizes a female engineer who is a highly successful entrepreneur in a field of engineering or who has had a lifetime of achievement in the engineering profession. The award honors the legacy of Kate Gleason, the first woman to be welcomed into ASME as a full member. It will be presented to Dr. Dowling at the Society's annual Honors Assembly to be held in conjunction with the 2013 ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition, Nov. 15 through 21, in San Diego.

At the University of Cambridge, Dowling is also a professor of mechanical engineering and chair of the University Gas Turbine Partnership with Rolls-Royce. She was appointed as deputy vice-chancellor in October 2013. She is one of the founders of the Energy Efficient Cities initiative at Cambridge and was the U.K. lead of the Silent Aircraft Initiative, in collaboration with researchers at Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Dowling's research is primarily in the fields of combustion, acoustics and vibration, and is aimed at low-emission combustion and quiet vehicles. Her research on unsteady combustion provides insight and models that are enabling gas turbine manufacturers to avoid damaging instabilities in low-emission combustors.

Her publications include more than 200 papers, and she has given numerous keynote and plenary lectures. She holds two patents.

Dowling has been an ASME reviewer and conference participant. In 2001, she received a Best Technical Paper Award from ASME International Gas Turbine Institute's Combustion and Fuels Committee.

Dowling is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering; a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering (U.S.) and the French Academy of Sciences; an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institution of Engineering Designers; a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS), the Institute of Acoustics (IOA), the Institute of Physics, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics; and a member of Academia Europaea.

Among her honors, Dowling was recognized in the Queen's Birthday honours in 2002, receiving the Commander of the British Empire medal for services to mechanical engineering, and was recognized again in the 2007 New Year's Honours List, receiving a Dame Commander of the British Empire for services to science. She was also included in BBC Radio 4's list of the top 100 most powerful women in the U.K. (2013) and was 37th in The Times Eureka magazine's list of the 100 most important people in British science, in 2010.

Dowling earned three degrees from Girton College, Cambridge: bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics; and a Ph.D. in engineering in 1978. In 2006 she earned a Sc.D. from the University of Cambridge. She holds honorary doctorates from the University of Kent, U.K. (2013); Imperial College, London (2013); and Trinity College, The University of Dublin (2008). Dowling is a chartered engineer and chartered physicist in the U.K.

About ASME ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society. ASME codes and standards, publications, conferences, continuing education and professional development programs provide a foundation for advancing technical knowledge and a safer world. For more information visit www.asme.org.