Professor Jim R McDonald

Principal

Professor Jim McDonald spent 7 years within the UK Electricity Supply Industry. He joined Strathclyde University in 1984 ultimately being appointed as the Rolls-Royce Professor of Electrical Power Systems in 1993.

He advises government, industry and commerce on power networks, distributed generation and new/renewable energy through DECC and non-executive corporate board advisory positions in the UK and USA.  He has co-authored over 500 journal/conference papers and 3 books.  He is Chairman of the Institute for Energy and Environment, the largest power engineering and energy systems research group internationally. He was appointed Deputy Principal at Strathclyde in 2006 focussing on research enhancement and commercialisation.  In October 2006 he was appointed as Director of the Glasgow Research Partnership in Engineering (GRPE), part of a major research pooling investment across Scotland (~£100m) by SFC and HEIs.  He is a member of the Scottish Enterprise Board, Scottish Science Advisory Council and has recently become a member of the UK Trade and Investment Energy Excellence Board.  He Chairs the Scottish Energy Technology Partnership (ETP) that involves the energy research intensive Scottish universities.  The ETP is well engaged with government and industry and is developing a large portfolio of energy research programmes.  He became Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde in March 2009.

Professor McDonald is a:

• Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
• Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology
• Fellow of the Institute of Physics