Professor Ian Poll OBE, FREng, FCGI, FAIAA, FRAeS

Business Development Director, Cranfield Aerospace, and Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Cranfield University

Ian Poll is Cranfield Aerospace's Business Development Director, responsible for creating new opportunities and new products from the Company's broad range of skills, capabilities, know-how and intellectual property. In addition, he is Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Cranfield University

He serves on the Cranfield Aerospace Board and provides high level technical oversight to the Company's three business streams. In addition, he is the Accountable Manager for the CAA Approved Manufacture and Maintenance Organisation.

As the Head of Cranfield Aerospace's parent, the College of Aeronautics, he founded the Company in 1997 and served as Managing Director from 1997 until 1999. In that capacity, he was responsible for defining the structure of the Company, the separation of the commercial activity from the College of Aeronautics and the successful transfer of the commercial activity together with the MOD and CAA design manufacture and maintenance approvals.

Director of Cranfield College of Aeronautics from 2001 until 2004 and Head of the College of Aeronautics from 1995 until 2001, he was previously Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Head of the Department of Engineering at the University of Manchester and Managing Director of Flow Science Ltd, a company that he founded in 1990.

The author of over 100 journal and conference papers on aerospace related topics, with periods of sabbatical leave at NASA Langley, NASA Ames and Stanford University, he has served on a number of Committees reporting to Government Ministers and Government Departments including, Aerospace Technology Steering Group, Environmental Safety and Security Working Group, Aerospace Innovation and Growth Team (technology) and DTI Aerospace Committee. He was a member of the NATO AGARD Fluid Dynamics Panel and he has contributed to the European ACARE activity.

He is a Fellow and elected Council member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the City and Guilds Institute of London, a Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a Fellow and elected Council member of the Royal Aeronautical Society. He was the 74th President of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 2001 and, in 2002, he was awarded the OBE in recognition of his services to the Cranfield College of Aeronautics.