Sarah Spurgeon

Timeline

1. 1985–1988

   BSc and DPhil at York

   She receives BSc and DPhil degrees from the University of York in 1985 and 1988.

2. 2000–2010

   IEEE and Honeywell medals

   She receives an IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000. In 2010, she wins the Honeywell International Medal for distinguished contribution as a control and measurement technologist to developing the theory of control.

3. 2002–2008

   Professor at Leicester

   She becomes Professor of Engineering at the University of Leicester in 2002 and heads its Department of Engineering from 2006 to 2008. Her academic career also includes a post at the University of Loughborough.

4. 2008–2016

   Head of school at Kent

   From 2008 to 2016, she is Professor of Control Engineering and Head of the School of Engineering and Digital Arts at the University of Kent. Her research covers systems modelling and analysis, robust control and estimation, with a focus on variable structure and sliding mode techniques. From 2011 to 2014, she is an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer for the Control Systems Society.

5. 2015

   An OBE for engineering

   In the 2015 New Year Honours, she is appointed an OBE for services to engineering and receives it from the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace. In 2015, she is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and President of the Institute of Measurement and Control.

6. 2016–2017

   UCL and the EPC presidency

   In August 2016, she leaves Kent after eight years to become Head of the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London. As President of the Engineering Professors' Council, she opens its annual congress in September 2017.

7. 2023–2025

   Reinforcement learning for tube robots

   In 2023, she coauthors a paper with Keshav Iyengar and Danail Stoyanov on deep reinforcement learning for concentric tube robot path following, with an approach that generalises across two to four systems. For 2024–25, she is Lead Supervisor of a UCL-EPSRC project on how control systems and AI can evolve together with guaranteed performance and robustness bounds.

8. As of October 2026

   Head of UCL's Robotics Institute

   She is Professor of Control Engineering and Head of the Robotics Institute at University College London, and a Vice President of the International Federation of Automatic Control. She sits on the Dstl Board as a non-executive member, appointed in July 2018. On UKACC's executive committee, she is a representative of the Institute of Measurement and Control (InstMC).