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University of Reading

Staff excellence recognised with international awards

Tuesday, 24 July 2012

Becki McKinlay

Becki McKinlay, Annual Giving Manager

Staff achievements in areas ranging from fundraising to literature have been recognised both nationally and internationally with a host of recent awards.

Congratulations to University members of staff, Becki McKinlay, Dr David Sutton, Dr Eugen Varvaruca, Professor Alan Evans, Professor Emeritus Adrian Wright and Professor Emeritus Ian Mills who have recently been awarded with the following:

  • Becki McKinlay, Development and Alumni Relations - CASE Iain More Award
  • Dr David Sutton, University Library - Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
  • Dr Eugen Varvaruca, Mathematics and Statistics - London Mathematical Society Whitehead Prize
  • Professor Alan Evans, Economics - International Real Estate Society Achievement Award
  • Professor Emeritus Adrian Wright, Physics - Otto-Schott Research Award
  • Professor Emeritus Ian Mills, Chemistry - SUNAMCO medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics

Becki McKinlay's outstanding achievements in fundraising in her role as Annual Giving Manager, have been recognised by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) with its Iain More Award.

Becki has developed strategies for recruiting, retaining and upgrading ever more donors to the University's Annual Fund. In the last eight years, over £3.2 million has been raised from 5,000 donors to enhance the student experience, and Reading's telethon campaign has become one of the best in the sector.

Becki said: "I didn't expect to win as there are so many great people working in Higher Education fundraising at the moment; I was just delighted to be nominated. I'm really honoured to win the award and it is also a credit to the University and our generous donors that our efforts in Annual Giving have been recognised."

Dr David Sutton, Director of Research Projects in the Library, has been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL). The Society has some 500 Fellows which include most of the very best novelists, short-story writers, poets, playwrights, biographers, historians, travel writers, literary critics and scriptwriters at work today.

David has published extensively on literary manuscripts and on ways of tracing copyright holders. The citation referred in particular to Dr Sutton's work on literary manuscripts, from the Location Register of English Literary Manuscripts and Letters to the recent Diasporic Literary Manuscripts Network - both based here at Reading. 

Dr Sutton, who signed the two hundred year-old Great Book of the Royal Society of Literature with the quill pen used by Lord Byron, said: "I was honoured to be enrolled as Fellow of the RSL alongside such front-page literary stars as Rachel Cusk and Howard Jacobson, and also alongside two writers whom I particularly admire, in Maureen Freely and Mark Girouard.  And I was relieved not to blot the ancient copybook!"

Dr Eugen Varvaruca, from the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has been recognised by the London Mathematical Society with the Whitehead Prize for achievements in and contributions to Mathematics.

Dr Varvaruca's ground-breaking analysis of free boundary problems for linear and nonlinear elliptic equations has opened new ground in the study of questions that have been unanswered for over a century. 

Professor Alan Evans has been awarded the International Real Estate Society's annual Achievement Award, for ‘outstanding achievement in real estate research, education and practice at an international level'. He has published widely on the economics of cities, or ‘urban economics', including what was probably the first doctoral thesis on the topic in 1973.

Professor Evans held the positions of both Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University in the 1990s and still teaches and publishes within the Department of Economics.

Adrian Wright, Professor Emeritus in Physics, has been honoured for his lifelong scholarly work dedicated to the experimental study of glass structure in general with a prestigious award in the field of science and technology development.

The Otto-Schott Research Award recognises Professor Wright's major contributions to the experimental study of borate glasses, melts and crystals.  He is the first UK glass scientist to be honoured in this way, and received the award at the European Society of Glass Science and Technology Conference in June.

Ian Mills, Professor Emeritus in Chemistry, has been awarded the SUNAMCO medal of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, for his work in the field of metrology: the science of measurement.

Professor Mills has redefined standard units of measurement, including the kilogram, ampere and Kelvin, in terms of the fundamental constants of nature. He has not only led the organisation responsible for developing this new system, but has published detailed, peer-reviewed descriptions of the principles, philosophies, and methodologies involved.  This work has been carried out entirely since Professor Mills retired in 1995 at the age of 65.