Honorary Fellows 2010
Richard Asplin
Richard Asplin was Brunel’s Corporate Web Editor when he retired at the end of 2008, after 28 years’ service.After studying at Ealing School of Photography, Richard started work as a photographer in 1966 in a London advertising agency. He became a freelance photographer in 1968, working for trade magazines and journals such as Accountancy and Campaign. He also specialised in textile photography for magazines (including Tailor and Cutter) and produced original photography for instructional audio visual aids programmes for various companies.
A change of career in 1976 took Richard to join NTG Motor Services in Ipswich, a company which specialised in the restoration of pre-war and early post-war MG sports cars.
In 1980, Richard joined the Audio Visual Aids Unit at West London Institute of Higher Education in Osterley, with responsibility for running a media resources centre, training staff and students in the use of photographic and electronic equipment. Five years later, Richard moved to the Institute’s Twickenham campus as Production Officer in Media Development Services. He was responsible for the integrated learning centre: the production of instructional and publicity programmes using video, audio and computer equipment and the training of staff and students in media skills and techniques.
In 1992, his responsibilities changed to include the production of teaching, learning and publicity materials including the prospectus, and he was also co-editor of the new staff newsletter West Word.
Following the merger with Brunel in 1997, Richard joined the University’s Marketing Department with responsibility for the production of undergraduate and postgraduate course brochures. He also published external publicity pages on the web and was editor of Brunel News. His final move came in 2000, when he became the University’s first Corporate Web Editor, taking on responsibility for the creation and development of Brunel’s website.
Andrew Barrett
Andrew Barrett studied Economics at Brunel between 1976 and 1980. After graduation, he joined Marconi Space and Defence Systems Ltd as one of the company’s first graduate commercial trainees. He stayed with the company for 11 years, rising to the position of Contracts Manager. After leaving Marconi, Andrew moved to Panasonic UK Ltd as Commercial and Contracts Manager and worked on ventures such as BiB (Digital Satellite Television), becoming a member of the Supervisory Board, and contracts with BAA, British Gas and BT. Following a period of consultancy work, Andrew joined Guy’s and St Thomas’s NHS Foundation Trust in early 2005 as Head of Business Marketing and Consultancy Services, a post he held until March this year. His role was to seek out and develop ethical, cost-effective business development opportunities in the UK and overseas. He worked on projects including the provision of nurse training programmes abroad and the establishment of research collaboration with a major university.
Andrew’s interests include classic cars, theatre and sports, especially Rugby Union for which he had an England trial.
Lesley Chisholm
Lesley was brought up in Beirut (Lebanon) and in Guildford, Surrey. After school in Godalming and studying English at the University of Sussex, Lesley worked as a Press Officer, first for the GLC and then for the Trust House Forte Group. She then worked in charity fundraising for the Spastics Society, now Scope, before becoming a journalist in 1976. After only a few years in journalism, Lesley became the editor of Interior Design, a trade magazine – a post she held for eight years.
In the late 1980s, her employer decided to relocate and Lesley took the opportunity for a complete change in direction. In 1991, she started work at the West London Institute, working on the quality and standards of the
Institute’s programmes which involved new course approvals, validation events and reviews.
Leading up to merger with Brunel, Lesley was heavily involved with arranging events for the approval of the Institute’s courses by Brunel and was also Secretary to the College Board.
Following the merger with Brunel in 1997, Lesley became Assistant Faculty Officer in the Faculty of Science. She was instrumental in bringing together and formulating cross-faculty quality and standards policies and practices appropriate to the needs of a diverse group of departments.
In 2004, Lesley decided that it was time for another change. She was offered a new post in Brunel International, co-ordinating academic partnerships. This was something completely new for Lesley and it was a role she enjoyed greatly until her retirement in June 2007.
Lesley’s interests include theatre, opera, walking her dog and holidays in warm places and she still undertakes freelance academic proofreading. She has a daughter and grand-daughter who live in the UK and a son who currently works in Bangkok.
Dr Sidney Chu
Sidney Chu is the Paediatric Occupational Therapy Service Manager for Ealing and Harrow Community Services. He qualified as an Occupational Therapist from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in 1982 and moved to the UK in 1987. He holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Biomechanics, a British Dyslexia Association Diploma, an MSc in Health Psychology and, in 2005, obtained his PhD from Brunel University. His doctoral thesis was on the multi-faceted intervention of children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Dr Chu is recognised as a clinical expert in the field of paediatric occupational therapy in the UK and has received many awards from professional and academic bodies for his work. Dr Chu is also active in research and publications. He is an article reviewer for the British Journal of Occupational Therapy and has published over 40 research and clinical articles in different journals, and also chapters in professional books.
Dr Chu has been a supporter of the Division of Occupational Therapy in the School of Health Sciences and Social Care for many years.
Dr Michael Day (posthumous)
Michael Day became interested in youth work while volunteering in a church youth club in Luton. He trained in youth and community work at Swansea University and worked at youth centres across south-east England before coming to Brunel in 1973. Michael was appointed as a Research Fellow in the Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Studies (BIOSS), becoming a
Senior Research Fellow in 1989 and Senior Lecturer in the then Department of Education in 1991. He obtained both MPhil and PhD degrees from Brunel.
Michael Day was largely responsible for the inception of professional education for youth and community workers at Brunel in the early 1970s. He developed extensive partnerships with local authorities and voluntary sector organisations, some of which remain in existence today, and advised the London and South-East Regional Advisory Council on the development of courses of professional education for youth workers in the region. Michael was responsible for establishing the Postgraduate Certificate in Youth and Community Work in 1987 and this was followed by the MA in Youth and Community Studies via distance learning – the first programme of its kind at Brunel. He also published widely on youth and youth work.
Michael’s work in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s led to the establishment of the Centre for Youth Work Studies at Brunel which achieved University Research Centre recognition in 2007. Without his early involvement and his careful work in building the Centre’s foundations it is doubtful whether the Centre would exist today.
Michael retired from Brunel in 2003 and is remembered as a man of real integrity and modesty who had a gentle, unassuming style and enormous patience.
Sadly, Michael Day died suddenly in March 2010. He is missed by the many people whom he taught and worked with during his years at Brunel, and by his wife, children and grand-children.
Julie Dearsley
Julie worked at Brunel for 17 years as a Systems Officer in Corporate Information Systems, formerly known as Administrative Computing. Prior to joining Brunel she worked for Citibank, Edmunds Walker and the London Borough of Harrow in various programming roles. Earlier still, she was an assistant planning engineer.
Julie was originally employed under the MAC initiative, a government initiative in the late 1980s and early 1990s designed to modernise and computerise administration and management within universities. Her initial role was
to install a packaged Registry and HR system - our first Oracle database - and move all existing users onto the new system. Reliability issues and
shortcomings in the software led Brunel to develop its own in-house Oracle student record system which was written by Julie.
This was a time of rapid expansion of administrative systems and Julie was Brunel’s only Oracle developer. By 1994, Julie was supporting at least 12 Oracle systems she had developed herself.
Today, Oracle underpins all the underlying administrative systems now in place at Brunel including the Student Record System (SITS), Finance (BluQube) and HR/Payroll. Although these are ‘bought in’ packages, there are many areas where the University has had to develop its own solutions. Julie was the Oracle developer for all these systems and necessary interfaces. Her role was to work with users to ascertain requirements and design a system to meet their needs.
One particular system developed by Julie – the Incident Database system – won praise from outside as well as within the University. The system was submitted for, and won, the 2006 Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association ‘Excellence in IT’ Award, bringing both peer recognition and an award of £5,000 to Brunel.
Since retiring from Brunel in September 2009, Julie has joined the University of the Third Age, and is an active member of their Social Committee. She also spends time with her grandson and enjoys rambling.
Joe Ferry
Joe Ferry obtained his BSc in Industrial Design at Brunel in 1993, before continuing his studies at the Royal College of Art, obtaining both an MA in Industrial Design Engineering (RCA) and a Diploma of Imperial College. Following completion of his studies, Joe joined Virgin Atlantic Airways as a Senior Designer in 1996. He was then appointed Industrial Design Manager before becoming Head of Design for Virgin Atlantic in 2002 – a post he still holds.
As Head of Design, Joe has challenged the conventions of the airline industry, setting the Virgin brand apart from its competitors. With his in-house design team, Joe is responsible for creating all the tangible aspects of the airline’s customer experience. He is probably best known as the vision behind Virgin Atlantic’s £105m flagship product - the Upper Class Cabin.
Joe is a member of the UK’s Design Council and is on the Executive Committee of the D&AD. Since 2000 he has received 26 major design awards and has had over a dozen patents filed.
Dr Mary Morley
Dr Mary Morley has a long association, in a variety of capacities, with the Division of Occupational Therapy in the School of Health Sciences and Social Care at Brunel.
Mary’s clinical background is in mental health, and she has worked in a wide range of clinical, managerial and leadership posts as an occupational therapist in this field. A keen interest in practice development triggered her move to South West London and St George’s Mental Health Trust in 2001 as Director of Therapies.
Mary has been involved in professional activities at national and local levels, including piloting the national employment contract. She has developed systems for maintaining evidence of continuing professional development that are used by many staff groups. She created the College of Occupational Therapists’ preceptorship programme for newly qualified practitioners; is nationally recognised as having great expertise in the area of supporting new graduates into the practice setting; and researches and publishes in this area. Mary completed the first professional doctorate in occupational therapy in the UK through the programme’s evaluation.
As a strong advocate for the need for occupational therapists to become more research active, Mary has supported a number of research studies in the area of mental health, facilitating the partnership between Brunel researchers and practitioners in her service. Mary’s support for Brunel researchers was an important factor in establishing the Centre for Professional Practice Research. Mary and her team also provide a large number of high quality placements for students on the BSc Occupational Therapy programme.
Mary represents occupational therapists on a number of national and regional groups related to informatics, quality metrics and mental health payment
by results (PbR). She is currently co-ordinating a number of work streams to develop evidence-based occupational therapy care packages. In recognition of her work she was awarded a Fellowship of the College of Occupational Therapists in 2006.
Geoffrey Oxlee
Geoffrey Oxlee was born in London and educated at Brockley County Grammar School. He joined the RAF in 1954 where he trained to become an imagery analyst, interpreting information from photography, infra-red and radar imagery for intelligence purposes, identifying and assessing enemy forces and their deployments, strategic installations and technical facilities. In 1973 he graduated from the Royal Air Force Staff College at Bracknell, and in 1979 graduated in Air Warfare from the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell.
In 1997 Geoffrey was elected as a Fellow of the Association of Lawyers and Legal Advisors, with special status as an advisor and expert witness in forensic imagery analysis. He is a Founder Member of the Society of Expert Witnesses and a Member of the Institute of Expert Witnesses. Among his many RAF appointments, Geoffrey was a senior lecturer in Imagery Analysis at the Joint School of Photographic Interpretation and at the US Air Intelligence Training Centre in Denver, Colorado. He has held many senior positions in Defence Intelligence, and in 1982 was awarded an OBE for services to Imagery Intelligences.
Geoffrey retired from the RAF in 1987 as Group Captain, and after working as a consultant, founded the Kalagate Imagery Bureau (now LGC Forensics) in 1989, providing support for those in the legal profession requiring specialist imagery services and forensic imagery analysis.
Geoffrey has been associated with the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies since 2007, speaking annually to students on the MA in Intelligence and Security Studies programme and advising staff on aspects of their research relevant to his expertise.
Nowadays, Geoffrey is a freelance advisor, lecturer and writer in imaging and intelligence matters, devoting his time to promoting the development of imagery analysis as a subject of research, study and teaching in British higher education. He also writes novels and plays golf.
Dr Antony Segal
Antony qualified as a medical doctor in 1956 and served as a family doctor for thirty years in Long Lane, Uxbridge. Already a keen glider pilot, on retirement from active medical practice he successfully completed the Diploma course
in advanced aviation medicine at the Royal Air Force Institute of Aviation Medicine, Farnborough. He carried out voluntary research work for twenty years at Farnborough to improve the ergonomics and structural safety of glider and light aircraft cockpits. The study was specifically aimed at reducing the incidence and severity of spinal injury in incidents and accidents, and his work is used as the standard reference source for cockpit crashworthiness.
Antony has flown 600 hours in gliders, 150 hours in light aircraft and has also carried our 7 free-fall parachute jumps. He has on several occasions given research seminars and specialist undergraduate lectures to students in the School of Engineering and Design, which have always been extremely well received. He has also provided expert assistance to Brunel research students during their PhD studies.
Antony has spoken at gliding conferences in the UK, USA, Canada, Italy, Germany, Sweden and Czech Republic. For the last six years he has also lectured to doctors attending the Diploma Course on Aviation Medicine at the RAF Centre of Aviation Medicine. In July 2008 the journal Technical
Soaring (the world’s primary journal dedicated to glider/sailplane design and operations) dedicated its entire contents for the January/April 2008 issue to Antony’s work.
Antony is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and has received many awards in recognition of his work including the Royal Aero Club Certificate of Merit (1988), the British Gliding Association Diploma (1988), the Bill Scull Safety Award (2003) and the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Bronze Medal Award (2009), as well as international awards.
Michael Storr
Michael Storr studied Physics at the University of Birmingham, graduating with both BSc (first class honours) and PhD degrees.
After graduating, Michael was appointed as a Research Associate at the University of Lancaster. As a member of the Photon Beam Collaboration, his work involved performing experiments at the Omega Spectrometer and he was a resident at CERN (European Organisation for Nuclear Research). He became a CERN Fellow in the Data Handling Division in 1980 and a CERN staff member in 1983. He continued working on the IBM 370 Emulator Project until 1989 when he joined the Electronics and Computing for Physics Division. A further move in 1997 saw Michael become Head of the CERN Technical Training Programme, responsible for over 100 courses with 2,000+ participants a year. He also co-founded CERN’s High School Teachers (HST) Programme which today sees 1,000 teachers a year from all over the world attending sessions delivered in 15 different languages.
Michael is now Deputy Group Leader of the CERN Physics Department Education Group and section leader of the Teacher Programme and Visits Service Unit. His involvement in the Visits Service has seen the number of annual visits to CERN more than double to 55,000. He is also responsible for the delivery of the CERN Guides course, is a CERN Education Officer and is Executive Secretary of the CERN Academic Training Committee.
Michael is fully committed to ‘training the scientists of tomorrow’ (one of CERN’s strategic missions) and believes that teachers have a fundamental role to play in inspiring and motivating young people to continue their scientific education. In this context, CERN promotes the education of young people in all the STEM subjects, not only in modern and particle physics.
In 2009, Michael’s work was recognised by the award of the Medal of the Polish Commission of National Education.
Geoff Alan Taylor
Having graduated from Brunel University with a BTech (Hons) in Engineering in 1976, Geoff Taylor achieved Chartered Civil Engineer status in 1979 after undertaking various civil and structural engineering roles at home and abroad between 1976 and 1985.Joining P&O Group in 1985, he undertook major projects such as Earls Court 2 Exhibition Centre and Manchester Arena. Transferring within the Group, Geoff became MD of Programme Management at Bovis Construction and in 1996 joined the European Board.
Geoff served as Development Director at Wembley Stadium from 1999, before joining Land Securities in late 2002 as Development Director where he completed over £1bn of capital projects.
A Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers since 1995, in 1996 he graduated from Harvard Business School. Geoff remains involved with Brunel, serving as a member of Court and contributing to various courses.
Shailesh Vara
Shailesh Vara graduated from Brunel University with a degree in Law with Honours in 1984. After qualifying as a solicitor, he practised in the City and West End of London.Shailesh was Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party between 2001 and 2005. In 2005, he was elected as Member of Parliament for North West Cambridgeshire. He served on the Select Committee for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from 2005 to 2006, after which he was appointed Shadow Deputy Leader of the House of Commons, a position he held until the recent General Election. He was Chairman of Conservative Parliamentary Friends of India between 2008 and 2010 and Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Parliamentary China Group from 2009 to 2010.
Having been successfully re-elected at the May 2010 General Election, he was appointed to the position of Government Whip in the new coalition government.
Thomas Watson
As the son of an RAF fighter pilot, Tom’s early years were spent moving around frequently including, after the war, East Africa. Tom went to Sixth Form College, studied for a science degree at The Polytechnic, Regent Street, and after working for the Civil Service for a year trained as a science teacher. He taught for seven years in London secondary schools, whilst studying for an Academic Diploma in Education and also holds an MA from Sussex. Tom was appointed to Shoreditch College as a Lecturer in Education in 1973 and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1976.
Shoreditch merged with Brunel in 1980 and for the next 15 years Tom taught within the Department of Education and Design, as well as helping to
establish the first distance learning PGCE course in the UK. He took a lead role in the establishment of the South West London Teacher Education Consortium (SWELTEC), an arrangement for secondary PGCE programmes that is still in operation.
In the mid 1990s, Tom left the Department of Education and moved to Uxbridge as Head of the Education Liaison Centre, a post he held for 5 years. He was also President of the Brunel AUT for many years and co-Chair of the Brunel Local Joint Committee. He was an elected member of University Senate and/or Council for nearly 25 years. In 2000, he co-wrote the successful bid that led to the establishment of the West London Partnership (WLP) for the Graduate Teacher Programme (GTP) - the largest provider of employment-based routes into teaching in the UK - and the Overseas Trained Teacher Programme (OTTP).
Although Brunel withdrew from the WLP in 2007 and it relocated to Kingston University, Tom continues to work for the Partnership and remains the programme director for the OTTP.
Tom’s hobbies include travel, photographing big game and American railroads about which he continues to publish articles and photos on a regular basis.
