Philip John Withers (born May 1963)

FREng Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) is an award and Scholarship, fellowship for engineers who are recognised by the Royal Academy of Engineering as being the best and brightest engineers, inventors and technologists in the UK a ...

FRS is the Regius Professor of Materials in the

School of Materials, University of Manchester The Department of Materials, at the University of Manchester is an academic and research department specialising in Materials Science and Engineering and Fashion Business and Technology. It is the largest materials science and engineering departm ...

. and Chief Scientist of the

Henry Royce Institute The Henry Royce Institute (often referred to as ‘Royce’) is the UK’s national institute for advanced materials research and innovation. Its vision is to identify challenges and to stimulate innovation in advanced materials research to suppo ...

Education

Withers was educated at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

where he was awarded an undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences (Physics) in 1985 followed by a PhD degree in the metallurgy of Metal Matrix Composites (MMCs) in 1988.

Career and research

Following his doctorate, Withers was appointed a lecturer at Cambridge before being appointed Professor at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

in 1998. His research investigates the application of advanced techniques to follow the behaviour of engineering and

natural material A natural material is any product or physical matter stop changing it. Minerals and the metals that can be extracted from them (without further modification) are also considered to belong into this category. Natural materials are used as building ma ...

s in real time and in 3D. In 2008 Withers set up the

Henry Moseley Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (; 23 November 1887 – 10 August 1915) was an English physicist, whose contribution to the science of physics was the justification from physical laws of the previous empirical and chemical concept of the atomic num ...

Manchester

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

Imaging Facility (MXIF), which has extensive suites of 3D X-ray Imaging facilities. In 2012, Withers became the inaugural Director o
the BP International Centre for Advanced Materials (ICAM)
aimed understanding and developing materials across the energy industry. ICAM is a collaboration between BP, The University of Manchester, The University of Cambridge,

Imperial College London Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...

and the

University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

. With Bill Clyne, he is a co-author of the textbook ''An Introduction to Metal Matrix Composites''. His research has been funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Awards and honours

Withers was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 2005 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: In 2014, the University of Manchester was awarded the

Queen's Anniversary Prize The Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher and Further Education are a biennially awarded series of prizes awarded to universities and colleges in the further and higher education sectors within the United Kingdom. Uniquely it forms part of the Bri ...

, recognising Withers work at the Manchester X-ray Imaging Facility.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Withers, Philip John Living people Fellows of the Royal Society Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Engineering Academics of the University of Manchester 1963 births Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award holders Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering