OBE for leading Heriot-Watt academic

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A leading IChemE Fellow and Professor of chemical engineering has been awarded honours in Her Majesty The Queen's 2019 New Year's Honours list.

Professor Raffaella Ocone was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to engineering.

The academic has more than 25 years' experience in modelling complex systems and her area of experience includes hydrodynamics of granular materials, kinetics and thermodynamics of multi-component mixtures, and developing a model for chemical looping combustion in carbon capture and production of clean energy.

She is also chair of the IChemE Research Committee and chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering award committee. In 2018, she played a key role for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the body that assesses the quality of research and studies in UK higher education institutions.

Professor Ocone said: "I am both humbled and honoured to have been awarded an OBE.

“I would like to take this opportunity to celebrate the international nature of engineering; the basis of my engineering skills come from Europe and the US, but I could have not reached what I did if the UK had not offered me huge opportunities to practise and enhance my skills."

Mindful of how Brexit might impact the international movement of skilled workers, she continued: "I have been lucky to live in countries without frontiers, free to move, to exchange ideas without any barrier. My hope is that the future generations can enjoy the same opportunities I had and be able to freely move and be enriched by diversity."

A full list of New Year's Honours 2019 is available.