Dr Duncan McFarlane from the Centre for Distributed Automation Control has been appointed to the new Royal Academy of Engineering Professorship in Service and Support Engineering.

'Service and support is a major growth area for many manufacturing businesses and this prestigious position - the first of its kind in the UK - is a tremendous opportunity for us to take a leading role academically and industrially.' Said Professor Mike Gregory , Head, IfM. Supported by Paul Tasker and Nik Thomas, both from BAE Systems, and the team of colleagues already working on Service and Support research we can look forward to this new programme evolving pretty rapidly over the coming months.'

The Chair is for 5 years in the first instance and during this period Duncan will be taking leave of absence from his readership in automation systems.