A former Archbishop of Canterbury, a leading film producer, and the founder of the BBC Asian Network in the West Midlands, are among those to receive honorary degrees from the University of Warwick at its 2016 summer graduation ceremonies.

The University’s summer graduations will take place throughout the week commencing Monday 18th July 2016 and they will be held in the Butterworth Hall in Warwick Arts Centre. Biographies of all of those who will receive Honorary Degrees follow below, along with the title of the degree they will receive. Details of media opportunities for each honorary graduand will be released nearer the time.

Monday 18 July Morning Professor Stephen R Leone (Hon DSc)	Monday 18 July Afternoon Mr Donald Ranvaud (Hon DLitt)
Tuesday 19 July Morning Lim Chuan Poh (Hon DSc)	Tuesday 19 July Afternoon Professor Ingrid Daubechies (Hon DSc)
Wednesday 20 July Morning Mr Tidjane Thiam (Hon LLD)	Wednesday 20 July Afternoon Anita K Bhalla (Hon DLitt)
Thursday 21 July Morning No honorary graduate	Thursday 21 July Afternoon   Mr Simon Walker (Hon LLD)
Friday 22 July Morning Professor Bryan R Cullen (Hon DSc)	Friday 22 July Afternoon Mr John Mathers (Hon LLD)
Saturday 23 July Morning Lord Rowan Williams (Hon LLD	Saturday 23 July Afternoon Mr Paul Ladd (Hon LLD) Mr Phil Townshend (Hon LLD) (posthumous award) now postponed at the request of his family

 

Anita Bhalla OBE - Hon DLitt (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

Anita is currently Chair of Performances Birmingham Ltd (Town Hall and Symphony Hall); Chair of the Creative City Partnership (a sub group of the Birmingham and Solihull LEP); a Board member of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP; and a recent past Chair of MAC (Midlands Arts Centre).

However Anita is particularly renowned for her extensive broadcasting career twenty six years of which have been with the BBC. That media career has been varied; from being a correspondent, making radio and TV network documentaries to setting up and developing the BBC Asian Network in the West Midlands now a national digital service.

She has been Editor Newsgathering, Managing Editor of one of the regions local radio stations and Head of Political and Community Affairs for England and Head of Public Space Broadcasting when she led the Big Screens project for the BBC pre and during the Olympics. She was also President of Circom a European wide group of public service broadcasters, and presented Channel 4’s Eastern Eye and several other national programmes.

She has also served in a range of education of social serves roles. She is trained teacher who turned her hand to becoming a Community Relations Officer in Leicester; a community worker in Handsworth, Birmingham, where she set up and ran one of the first hostels for Asian Women; as well as dealing with wider issues around welfare and social care. She has also worked as a lecturer teaching language and employment skills to Industrial workers, alongside training their managers in effective communications.

She has served as: a member of Birmingham’s recent Social Inclusion Commission; chair of Grestone Junior and Infant School; a member of the governing body of Birmingham City University; and as a trustee of the Children’s University. In 2012 she was the High Sheriff for the West Midlands.

She has won several awards including the CRE’s Race in the Media National Television News Award, and the Windrush Broadcaster of the Year In 2009 she was awarded an OBE for her services to Broadcasting and Communities.

Professor Bryan R Cullen - Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

Born in Bradford, Professor Bryan R Cullen is a Warwick graduate who was awarded a BSc in biochemistry from Warwick in 1973.

He moved to the US where he obtained a Ph.D. in Microbiology from Rutgers University in 1984. In 1987, he was recruited to Duke University Medical Center as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He currently holds a James B. Duke Professorship in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology and serves as Director of the Center for Virology at Duke.

Professor Cullen’s interests have historically revolved around the use of viruses as genetic tools to understand aspects of the biology of the eukaryotic cell, focusing particularly on RNA-sequence mediated gene regulation. Currently, his laboratory is studying the biogenesis and function of microRNAs, and in particular virus-encoded microRNAs, and also the use of CRISPR/Cas-based gene editing technology as a tool to investigate and inhibit the replication of viruses such as HSV-1 and HBV. A recent research interest is the role of post-transcriptional modifications of mRNAs and how these affect viral replication.

He has published over 280 research papers and is on the editorial board of 11 prominent journals. He is recipient of a great many awards and accolades including: the 1989 Eli Lilly Molecular Biology Contact Award; the 1993 Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award being listed as one of the 10 most cited AIDS researchers by Science; the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey Distinguished Alumni Award (2000); the distinguished professorship James B. Duke Professor of Genetics (2000); Fellowship in the American Academy of Microbiology (2009); being twice named one of the Top Peer Reviewers for the Journal of Virology (2009 and 2011); being elected to the rank of Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (2011); the 2013 Research Mentoring Award for Basic Science Research, Duke University Medical Center (2013); being listed as one of the world’s most “Highly Cited Researchers” by Thomson Reuters (2001-present); and PLoS Pathogens selected two manuscripts from the his laboratory as among the most important published in the first ten years of the journal’s existence

Professor Ingrid Daubechies - Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

One of the foremost applied mathematicians of our time, Professor Ingrid Daubechies was born in Belgium and studied physics at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, obtaining a BSc degree in 1975 and her PhD. degree in 1980. Between 1975-1987 she worked in the Vrije Universiteit’s Department of Theoretical Physics. first as a Research Assistant and then as a Research Professor. In 1987, she moved to the USA, joining the Mathematical Research Center at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a Researcher and Rutgers University as a Professor of Mathematics. In 1993 she joined the Mathematics Department and the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Princeton University, becoming the first woman Professor of Mathematics at Princeton. She was first woman to receive the National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics in 2000. And in 2010, she was elected the President of the International Mathematical Union – again the first woman to hold this position. In 2011, she joined Duke University as a James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics.

She is best known for her breakthroughs in wavelet research and her contributions to digital signal processing. Some of the wavelet bases she constructed have become a household name in signal analysis; they, and other computational techniques she developed, have been incorporated into the JPEG2000 standard for image compression. Apart from her work on wavelets, Daubechies has contributed to other seminal advances in time-frequency analysis.

Her numerous prizes include two American Mathematical Society Steele Prizes—in 1994 for Exposition and in 2011 for Seminal Paper; the American Mathematical Society’s Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize in Mathematics (1997); the Pioneer Prize of the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (2006, with Heinz Engl); the Jack S. Kilby Signal Processing Medal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2011); and the 2012 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Basic Sciences category (jointly with David Mumford). Also in 2012 she received the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, one of the largest monetary awards in the United States for outstanding achievements in mathematics, for “her numerous and lasting contributions to applied and computational analysis and for the remarkable impact her work has had across engineering and the sciences.”

In addition to her commitment to educating and mentoring the next generation of mathematicians, Ingrid continues to break new ground in mathematics research and expand its impact outside of her discipline, focusing on the analysis of signals and inverse problems in a wide range of settings, with applications ranging from fMRI and geophysics to paleontology and the study of fine art paintings.

Paul Ladd - Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Paul Ladd took up the position of Director of the UN Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) in October 2015. Before joining UNRISD he had been at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in New York, where he had most recently been Director of the team supporting consultations and technical inputs for the 2030 Development Agenda.

Previously he led UNDP’s policy team on ‘inclusive globalization’ – covering policy and research on trade, development finance, and migration. From 2008-2009, he provided support to the Office of the UN Secretary-General on the impacts of the financial and economic crisis, and the UN’s engagement with the nascent G20.

Before moving to New York, Paul was a policy adviser on international development for the UK Treasury, including the period building up to and through the UK’s Chair of the G8 and European Union in 2005. Previously he had been Chief Economist and acting Head of Policy with UK charity Christian Aid, the UK Department for International Development’s economic adviser for South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, and a financial adviser in the Central Bank of Guyana.

Paul received both his BSc in Economics and his MSc in Quantitative Development Economics from the University of Warwick.

Professor Stephen R. Leone - Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

Stephen R. Leone is The John R. Thomas Endowed Chair in Physical Chemistry and a Professor of Chemistry and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a faculty principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

He received his BA in Chemistry at Northwestern University in 1970 and his PhD in Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley with Professor C. Bradley Moore in 1974. He was an assistant professor at the University of Southern California from 1974-76. He assumed a position with National Institute of Standards and Technology (formerly the National Bureau of Standards), and the University of Colorado in 1976 and became full professor in 1982. Dr Leone was a Fellow and staff member of the National Institute of Standards and Technology as well as Adjoint Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Lecturer of Physics at the University of Colorado. In 2002 he assumed his current position at Berkeley. He served as Division Director of Chemical Sciences and the Director of the Chemical Dynamics Beamline at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Currently he is a member of the Executive Committee of the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science and a member of the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee of the U.S. Department of Energy.

His research interests include ultrafast laser investigations and soft x-ray probing of molecular and solid state dynamics, attosecond physics and chemistry, state-resolved collision processes and kinetics investigations, and nanoparticle dynamics. He is author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications. He has also served as associate editor and editor of Annual Reviews of Physical Chemistry.

Professor Leone is a fellow of the Optical Society of America, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

He has been awarded: the US Department of Commerce’s Silver Medal Award 1980; American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry 1982; American Chemical Society Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, with D. J. Nesbitt and J. T. Hynes 1983; the Coblentz Award for Spectroscopy 1984; the US Department of Commerce Gold Medal Award 1984; the Arthur S. Flemming Award for Government Service 1986; the Herbert P. Broida Prize of the American Physical Society 1989; the Samuel Wesley Stratton Award, National Institute of Standards and Technology 1992; the Bourke Medal of the Faraday Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry 1995; made a Member, National Academy of Sciences 1995; made a Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 2000. He was also awarded: the American Chemical Society Peter Debye Award 2005; the Polanyi Medal of the Gas Kinetics Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry; the Irving Langmuir Prize in Chemical Physics, American Physical Society 2011; the Chemical Society Reviews Lecture Award, Royal Society of Chemistry 2011; and the Distinguished Charles A. McDowell Lectureship Award, The University of British Columbia 2012.

Mr Lim Chuan Poh - Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

On 1 April 2007 Mr Lim Chuan Poh was appointed Chairman of The Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), Singapore's lead public sector agency that spearheads research to advance scientific discovery and develop innovative technology, further economic growth and improve lives.

Appointed as Deputy Chairman of A*STAR in November 2006, Mr Lim has been a Board Member of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) since 2003, and Singapore’s National Research Foundation since January 2006. He was the Chairman of the National Infocomm Security Committee from 2010 to 2015, and is currently the Chairman of the Governing Board of the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, a joint Medical School between NTU and Imperial College. He co-chairs the Health and Biomedical Sciences, and the National Cybersecurity R&D Executive Committee, and is a member of the Advanced Manufacturing and Engineering Executive Committee. He is also a member of the Singtel Technology Advisory Panel (TAP). Mr Lim was appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (LKY SPP) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) since July 2013.

He is a Board and Council Member of the Science and Technology in Society (STS) forum; and a Member of Japan’s World Premier International (WPI) Initiative Programme Assessment and Review Committee since 2007; as well as being a Special Committee Member of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Advisory Committee since 2014. He became a founding member of Frost and Sullivan Board of Governors of the Economic Development Innovation Council in 2014.

Prior to leading A*STAR, Mr Lim was the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Education (MOE) from July 2003 to March 2007. At MOE, Mr Lim oversaw the transformation Singapore’s publicly funded universities into Autonomous Universities (AUs) to enable them to reach new peaks of excellence. He also reviewed the university research framework that led to the creation of the Academic Research Council and a new Academic Research Funding Framework. Before joining MOE he spent 23 years with the Singapore Armed Forces in a range of senior appointments and last held the office of the Chief of Defence Force.

After graduating with degrees in Mathematics from Cambridge University, he then attended the Camberley Staff College in 1988 and graduated with the Best Overseas Student Award. He received a Masters in Business Administration degree (with distinction) from Cornell University in 1993. He also attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School in 2003.

He has been awarded the Public Administration Medal, Gold in 1999 and the Meritorious Service Medal in 2003. He was awarded the US Legion of Merit (Degree of Commander) in 1999 and again in 2001; Thailand’s the Knight Grand Cross of the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant in 2001; and Indonesia’s Bintang Yudha Dharma Utama 1^st Class in 2001.

John Mathers - Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

CEO of the Design Council since 2012. John Mathers describes his vision there being: “To lead it into the next chapter of our rich history that dates back to 1944. We are re-constituted as a charity and merged with CABE (the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) in 2012, giving us a unique perspective on the world of design. Our mission is to improve people’s lives through the use of design. Our work places design at the heart of stimulating business growth, helps to transform our public services and enhances places and cities to ensure a sustainable future for everyone. We advance new design thinking, encourage debate and inform government policy. Our vision is to create a better world by design.”

He has worked for over thirty years in the brand and design industry, leading a number of marketing, brand and design consultancies in the UK and Internationally, as well as a number of roles within FMCG (Fast-moving consumer goods) and retail sectors. This has included the roles of : Head of Brand at Safeway, CEO role at the Holmes & Marchant group, and ten years leading of the Brand Union, WPP’s flagship brand design agency.

Over the last ten years, he has been actively committed to the development of the design industry, serving as President of the DBA (Design Business Association) for three years. He has promoted design recently with Design Council and the design community through involvement with: BEDA, The Creative Industries Council, The University of Warwick’s own Warwick Commission, Creative and Cultural Skills, and the National Centre for Universities and Business and the Knowledge Transfer Network. At the Design Council he is particularly proud of winning the leadership of the Design For Europe work which has given an opportunity to show the Design Council’s significant contribution to design within the European community to a worldwide audience.

Donald Ranvaud - Hon DLitt (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

From 1976–88, Donald Ranvaud taught at the University of Warwick (in our Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies) and at a number of other higher education institutions. During this time he also worked as a freelance journalist for MFB, Sight and Sound, The Guardian, La Repubblica, Cahiers du cinéma and American Film, as well as founding the independent cinema and media magazine Framework, which he edited until 1988. He published several books on Italian cinema and directed documentary items for Channel 4 TV programmes and RAI 1, including items presenting portraits of Paul Schrader, Raul Ruiz, Cui Jian, Laurie Anderson and David Mamet.

In 1988 he established the European Script fund with Renee Goddard as part of the MEDIA Programme of the Commission of the European Community.

Since 1989 he has worked as film producer, in China from 1989 to 1993, he produced Life on a String and Farewell My Concubine; in Latin America from 1994 to present, he produced Central do Brasil, Familia Rodante, Xango, Lavoura Arcaica, Babilonia 2000, Madame Sata, and City of God. He was also executive producer on The Constant Gardener by Fernando Meirelles in Kenya.

Alongside productions, he managed sales at Videofilmes, Bouquet Multimedia and Sogepaq as well as helping to set up Wild Bunch.

As Buena Onda's Creative Director since 2003,he has continued to discover filmmakers, helping them to access world markets. He is an ambassador for Latin American cinema, setting up joint ventures with Cinergia in Costa Rica for Centro America, and with the Puerto Rico Film Fund. After establishing the film school La Fabrica with Roberto Lanza in Cochabamba, Bolivia he helped set up an Institute for second features, theatre and cinema (Artes Andes Americas).

Since early 2005, first as Head of International Relations with Rain Networks, Brasil, and later independently, he has focused on the development of a cost effective distribution platform that becomes the new digital paradigm for cinema. He is also the Creative Producer for the Film4Climate initiative of Connect4Climate, a World Bank Group climate change communication program.

The films he has worked on have collected a dozen Oscar nominations and he was also nominated for the Torino International Festival of Young Cinema Best Feature Film award for Visioni private in 1989.

Tidjane Thiam - Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Mr Tidjane Thiam has been Chief Executive Officer of Credit Suisse Group AG since July 1, 2015. Prior to that he was Group Chief Executive of Prudential plc from 2009 to 2015, (after one year as Chief Financial Officer).

Between 2002 and 2008, he held a variety of leadership roles at Aviva after being a partner at the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. From 1994 to 1999, he was CEO of the National Bureau for Technical Studies and Development and subsequently Secretary of Development and Planning for Côte d’Ivoire.   

Mr Thiam co-chaired the World Economic Forum 2016 in Davos and joined the Group of Thirty (G30), a select group of leaders in international finance, in 2015. He was named Chairman of the Board of the Association of British Insurers from 2012 to 2014 and was awarded the Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. Since 2014 he has been on the Board of Directors of 21st Century Fox.

He is a graduate from the École Polytechnique and the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris, and holds an MBA with distinction from Insead.

Phil Townshend - Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Phil Townshend was Councillor for Lower Stoke in Coventry and he served as Coventry City Council’s Deputy Leader. He died in October 2015 after a short illness so this will be the first time that University of Warwick has ever awarded a posthumous honorary degree.

He became a councillor in 1999, representing the people of Lower Stoke in Coventry, being re-elected by them in four successive elections. As Deputy Leader of the Council, with responsibility for equalities, neighbourhoods, policing and democratic issues.

He became Chair of University Hospitals Coventry & Warwickshire NHS Trust in 2007 and held the role for more than five years. He was also a school governor and Director of the Warwickshire Law Society Limited.

His dedication to the city and the impact of his service has attracted praise at a national level since his death, including former Prime Minister Gordon Brown and former Labour leader Ed Milliband, both of whom praised Phil for his contribution to Coventry:

Gordon Brown said: “Phil was a true champion for Coventry. For nearly 20 years he campaigned to make Coventry a better place to live for his neighbours and was an integral part of Labour’s senior team…. Coventry is very different now to how it was 16 years ago when Phil first entered the Council House. Those strides forward for Coventry, in large part, are down to years of hard work of Phil and his Labour colleagues.”

Ed Miliband said: “[he] dedicated nearly two decades to public service for the people of Coventry – campaigning as a Labour Party member, 16 years as a Councillor and most recently as the Deputy Leader of the Council. He was passionate about his community and making it a better place for people to live.

Simon Walker  Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

 Simon Walker became Director General of the Institute of Directors in October 2011. He previously served as Chief Executive of the BVCA, the organisation that represents British private equity and venture capital, from October 2007 to March 2011.

Between 2003 and 2007 Simon worked at Reuters as Director of Corporate Communications and Marketing. He was Communications Secretary to HM The Queen at Buckingham Palace from 2000 to 2003 and earlier served as Director of Corporate Affairs at British Airways. From 1996-1997 Simon worked as a special adviser in the Prime Minister's Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street.

Simon was previously a partner at Brunswick, the public relations group, and Director of European Public Affairs for Hill & Knowlton in Brussels. He has been a member of the Better Regulation Commission, a Trustee of The Queen’s Golden Jubilee Trust and the New Zealand-UK Link Association. He is a Council Member of the European Policy Forum and a member of the Parliamentary Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Public Engagement. In 2015, GQ magazine listed Simon among the 100 best connected men in the country.

He was born in South Africa, and has worked as a journalist and consultant in New Zealand, Belgium and the UK. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union. He was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. 

Lord Rowan Williams - Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Lord Rowan Williams was born in Swansea into a Welsh-speaking family, and was educated at Dynevor School in Swansea and Christ's College Cambridge where he studied theology. He studied for his doctorate, in the theology of Vladimir Lossky, a leading figure in Russian twentieth-century religious thought at Wadham College Oxford, taking his DPhil in 1975. After two years as a lecturer at the College of the Resurrection, near Leeds, he was ordained deacon in Ely Cathedral before returning to Cambridge.

From 1977, he spent nine years in academic and parish work in Cambridge: first at Westcott House, being ordained priest in 1978, and from 1980 as curate at St George's, Chesterton. In 1983 he was appointed as a lecturer in Divinity at Cambridge, and the following year became dean and chaplain of Clare College. IN 1986 he returned to Oxford as Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ Church; he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity in 1989, and became a British Academy fellow in 1990. He is also an accomplished poet and translator. Apart from Welsh, he speaks or reads nine other languages.

In 1991 the then Professor Williams accepted election and consecration as Bishop of Monmouth, a diocese on the Welsh borders, and in 1999 on the retirement of Archbishop Alwyn Rice Jones he was elected Archbishop of Wales, one of the 38 primates of the Anglican Communion.

In July 2002, Archbishop Williams was confirmed on 2 December 2002 as the 104th bishop of the See of Canterbury: the first Welsh successor to St Augustine of Canterbury and the first since the mid-thirteenth century to be appointed from beyond the English Church. In 2012 he stepped down from his position as the Archbishop of Canterbury and took up the role of Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Lord Williams is acknowledged internationally as an outstanding theological writer, scholar and teacher. He has written extensively across a very wide range of related fields of professional study and poetry and a list of his writings now follows:

Faith in the Public Square; The Lion's World; For All That Has Been, Thanks: Growing a Sense of Gratitude Rowan Williams & Joan Chittister; Crisis and Recovery: ethics, economics and justice Ed. with Larry Elliott; A Margin of Silence: The Holy Spirit in Russian Orthodox Theology; Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction; Wrestling with Angels; Tokens of Trust: An Introduction to Christian Belief; The Worlds We Live In: dialogues with Rowan Williams on global economics and politics Edited by C Foster and E Newell; Why Study the Past?; Grace and Necessity; Christian Imagination in Poetry and Polity; Silence and Honeycakes: the wisdom of the desert; The Dwelling of the Light; Writing in the Dust: reflections on 11 September and its aftermath; Ponder These Things: praying with icons of the Virgin; Love's Redeeming Work: the Anglican quest for holiness Ed. with G Rowell and K Stevenson; On Christian Theology; Lost Icons: reflections on cultural bereavement; Christ on Trial; and Sergii Bulgakov; Open to Judgement; Teresa of Avila; Arius: heresy and tradition; The Truce of God; Resurrection; The Wound of Knowledge; The Theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky. His poetry has also been published in a number of collections of his work.  

For further information please contact:

Peter Dunn, Director of Press and Policy, University of Warwick
Tel UK 024 76523708 office 07767 655860 mobile
Tel overseas: +44 (0)24 76523708 office +44 (0)7767 655860 mobile/cell
email p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk 

PR 451 27^th May 2016