FROM UNDERGRAD TO CBE - AND BEYOND

Since joining the University of Southampton in the early ‘70s as a mechanical engineering undergraduate, Professor Philip Nelson’s long and distinguished career features major milestones in both academia and industry.

From Director of the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), to Pro Vice- Chancellor for Research and Enterprise, to CEO of EPSRC, and even lunch with the Queen – Professor Philip Nelson has a wealth of career highlights.

Being made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) by the Queen in 2018 for his services to UK Engineering and Science – and meeting Sir Paul McCartney in the process – is also up there with the top moments. “Sir Paul McCartney was honoured at the same time as me,” he said. “It was listening to his music that first got me interested in sound, so it was great to talk to him about his own career.”

It wasn’t the first time Philip, Professor of Acoustics, met the Queen. In 2017, when he was CEO and Deputy Chair of EPSRC, he was invited to dine with the Queen and and Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, at Buckingham Palace.

“My office took a call and said, ‘I’m not sure if this is for real, but you’re invited to lunch at the palace’,” he recalled. “It was great fun. I sat next to the Duke, who was one of the main proponents of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and it was fantastic talking to him about the discipline.”

Studying sound

Engineering – acoustics, in particular – has been Philip’s passion since he came to Southampton in 1971. He had a job with a small company in Colchester called Sound Attenuators Ltd, which made silencers for fans. The company sponsored Philip to study at Southampton due to the University’s renowned expertise in sound and vibration at the ISVR, which was founded in 1963.

Philip studied aerodynamic sound for his PhD, whilst simultaneously working for Sound Attenuators Ltd. He then worked for the company for four years before returning to Southampton as a lecturer.

“Professor Stephen Elliott and I really benefitted from a new SERC – now EPSRC – Special Replacement Scheme,” said Philip. “I got into an academic career a lot more easily than perhaps it is these days, I was very lucky.

“Steve and I worked together on an idea to cancel out sound with sound – using one noise to cancel out another – on propeller aircraft, which proved successful. Nowadays there are a couple of thousand aircraft with sound cancellers on, largely thanks to Steve’s efforts.”

The pair authored a book, Active Control of Sound, in 1992 and, in the same year, they jointly won the Tyndall Medal for achievement and services in the field of acoustics from the Institute of Acoustics.

Professor Philip Nelson with two former PhD students, Yuvi Kahana and Takashi Takeuchi, in the University's anechoic chamber when the department first began work on 3D sound, circa 2000

In 1999, the Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre opened, and Philip was its first Director. He was also Director of the ISVR from 2000 to 2005.

From Southampton to national

Philip was Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise from 2005 to 2013, leading Southampton’s submission to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise and the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), and chaired the General Engineering sub-panel for REF 2014.

“I was hugely proud of what we achieved at Southampton with each REF – it’s a huge job,” he said.

As Pro Vice-Chancellor, he promoted interdisciplinary working by forming University Strategic Research Groups, and then led the formation of the Institute for Life Sciences, the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute and the Web Science Institute. He also helped to set up the Science and Engineering South Consortium, with a mission to improve both knowledge and equipment sharing.

In 2014, Philip was seconded to EPSRC. “I was at EPSRC for four-and-a-half years, during the forming of UKRI, which was an interesting period,” he said. “I was also chair of Research Councils UK, which was the body being replaced by UKRI. I think we have yet to see the full benefit of UKRI, and I think the potential is huge. Forming UKRI has already helped to convince the Government to invest more in science and technology.”

At EPSRC, he led the launch of the Turing Institute, the Henry Royce Institute and the Rosalind Franklin Institute. Philip said: “The great thing about the job was visiting some of the leading universities in the UK and meeting everyone involved, from Vice- Chancellors to research students. I really enjoyed the interaction with colleagues across the sector.”

He added: “I regularly sat in front of select committees in the House of Commons and House of Lords. These were certainly mindconcentrating experiences. I came to realise just how good we are in the UK, especially in terms of converting quite modest investment in research into spectacular outputs.”

Future looking

Philip is now semi-retired but remains active and involved in Southampton research and enterprise, as well as director of several spinout companies. One of these is Opsodis Ltd, a joint venture with Kajima Corporation in Japan, set up to exploit some of the work on 3D sound that Philip did with former student Dr Takashi Takeuchi. This has successfully licensed technology to some leading audio manufacturers.

“I really want to do a bit more research now,” he said. “It goes back to my love of the subject. My former student Professor Filippo Fazi has set up the Huawei Audio Innovation Lab, so I continue to contribute to that.”

Philip also chairs the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowships scheme, and he sits on the MacRobert Committee, which identifies finalists and winners of the MacRobert Award, the UK’s longest-running and most prestigious prize for engineering innovation. He has also been a member of the search committee for the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and chairs several advisory boards for major research projects.

Philip is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR ACOUSTICS?

Acoustics remains a vitally important discipline, according to Philip.

“Problems in communication acoustics range from hearing and deafness, through to speech intelligibility, to immersive audio and robot hearing,” he said. “There are still difficult problems in dynamics and the noise radiated by vibrating structures. There is potential for the use of acoustics and vibrations for condition monitoring and energy harvesting, and some interesting possibilities with the bottomup design of new forms of structures and materials.”

There are also huge challenges to be addressed in aeroacoustics. Philip explained: “Air transport is changing so much, with the future looking towards urban aircraft. Noise is about the biggest barrier to that sort of aeronautical activity – light electric aircraft and noise is a huge issue. Similarly, as cars electrify, internal noise at high speed is a problem that still needs to be addressed, whilst at low speeds electric vehicles don’t make enough noise and we have to worry about warning sounds.”

He added: “Underwater acoustics is also still a very important issue, for traditional defence reasons but also due to the effect of sound on marine life. And ultrasound in medicine is a huge area with exciting developments happening all the time.”

Three directors of ISVR: Professor Jeremy Astley, Professor Philip Nelson and Professor Stephen Elliott, with a Rolls-Royce fan blade. Stephen succeeded Philip as director, and Jeremy succeeded Stephen. Photo taken circa 2008.