Sriram Subramanian

Anna Barnett

Two outstanding academics from the School of Engineering and Informatics have been given key leadership roles supporting Sussex’s research and business engagement activities.

The University is pleased to announce that Professor Sriram Subramanian and Professor Anna Barnett have been appointed joint Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellors of Research.

Professor Subramanian’s role will be focused on building grant capture and research performance while Professor Barnett will specialise in business engagement and industrial strategy.  They will work alongside Professor Gordon Harold in his capacity as Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research Excellence Framework).

A Professor of Informatics at the University for over four years, Professor Subramanian leads the Interact Lab.  He has published over 100 research articles on designing new and novel user-experiences through a combination of physical science, engineering and creativity.  He is also the co-founder of Ultrahaptics, a hugely successful spin-out company that aims to commercialise the potential of mid-air haptics.

In September 2018, Professor Subramanian was named a Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) Chair in Emerging Technologies and tasked with the challenge of developing areas of emerging technology that could bring significant economic and societal benefits to the UK.

Professor Barnett is Professor of Space Research and leads the Space Research Group in the School of Engineering and Informatics.  She is an experimental physicist with interests in detector physics and instrumentation for space science and extreme terrestrial environments.

When promoted to the role of Professor of Space Research last year at the age of 33, she became the youngest person to have ever held a Professorial Chair at the University of Sussex. Two years earlier she won the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Engineering and the University of Sussex Emerging Researcher award for her research into improved spacecraft guidance.

Vice-Chancellor Adam Tickell said: “In their time here at Sussex, both Sri and Anna have shown remarkable ingenuity and productivity with their research output, have been incredibly successful with their own grant capture and built up excellent reciprocal relationships with industry.

“I am delighted that we can now offer them roles where those skills can be harnessed for the whole of the University to benefit from.

“It pleases me that we have such exceptional candidates for these posts from within our own talented faculty and I congratulate them both on their new roles.”