David Bogle
David Bogle CEng FREng FIChemE is elected as the 81st president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE). Bogle’s presidential address was delivered on June 16 from Savoy Place, London, only 100 meters from the site where IChemE’s first meeting took place 100 years ago, according to the organization. An audience of around 100 members, trustees and invited guests were present with others watching the address live online.
Currently a professor of chemical engineering and pro-vice-provost of the Doctoral School and Early Career Researchers at University College London (UCL), Bogle was elected last year by the membership to take up the position of president of the Institution in June 2022. The formal handover of the presidency was given by the 80th president, Jane Cutler, during the Institution’s annual general meeting.
Entitled “Chemical Engineering: An Ethical Profession,” the presidential address focused on the need to ensure that ethical thinking is placed at the forefront of chemical engineering professionalism and education, as safety and sustainability have been in recent years. Bogle commented that safety and sustainability are parts of the ethical code that chemical engineers must all aspire to and for which the next generation must be trained.
“Showing that our decisions and behaviors can be trusted in an ethical sense allows us to step up and be part of the major decisions. It means that we are not just trusted by our employer and colleagues but also by society,” Bogle says in a press release from IChemE. “The climate emergency and making the world sustainable is the great challenge of our time. We chemical engineers have a central role in this through designing industrial processes, urban systems and many everyday operations to be more sustainable and eventually carbon net zero. Our skillset puts us right at the heart of the challenge through devising the best use of energy and materials to satisfy – and limit – the demand of our fellow citizens.”
Bogle earned a PhD from Imperial College London before spending three years in industry and three years in academia in Australia. He joined UCL in 1990. In his current role of pro-vice-provost of the Doctoral School and Early Career Researchers oversees researchers across all disciplines. His expertise is in process systems engineering and systems biology, working with a range of academic and industrial partners, particularly from the pharmaceutical industry.Bogle was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2005 and is currently chair of the Engineering Ethics Reference Group for the Royal Academy of Engineering and Engineering Council.
Read the press release at: www.icheme.org
