News story

New chair of the Defence Scientific Advisory Council

Professor David Delpy will take up the post of Defence Scientific Advisory Council chair from 1 April 2014.

• From: Defence Scientific Advisory Council
• Published: 14 January 2014

This news article was withdrawn on 2 August 2018

This news article has been withdraw as Defence Scientific Advisory Council has closed. The replacement body, known as the Defence Science Expert Committee (DSEC) will continue to provide science and technology advice across MOD.

Professor David Delpy

The Defence Scientific Advisory Council (DSAC) is a non-departmental public body of the Ministry of Defence consisting of world-renowned scientists and engineers from UK industry and academia.

It is the main source of independent advice on non-nuclear science, technology, engineering, analysis and mathematics issues to ministers and senior MOD officials.

Professor Delpy is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has over 30 years experience in both the academic and applied biomedical physics domains.

He has considerable experience of chairing high-level scientific committees, experience he will be able to bring to bear in his new role.

Professor Delpy said:

I am extremely excited about taking on this role. Science and engineering play key roles in Defence and I hope that my experience, both at UCL (University College London) and EPSRC, will enable me to bring valuable knowledge and expertise to this role

The outgoing chair, Professor Ian Poll, served for 3 years. Under his chairmanship, DSAC has undergone significant restructuring to better align with a transformed MOD and provided advice on a number of topics.

In particular the Terrier review, which provided timely recommendations on how the technical problems encountered with adapting and testing this vehicle could be resolved, enabled the project to proceed to successful delivery of the modified vehicle for deployment on operations.

Secondly, the Operational Analysis Support to Current Operations review identified the importance of the role played by deployed analysts and made detailed recommendations on how to ensure the continued effectiveness of this valuable resource.

Professor Delpy’s appointment as the chair of DSAC is for an initial term of 3 years.

Published 14 January 2014