Society of Oxford University Engineers

April 2014: SOUE Database Migration and Other News

From the President
April 2014

Dear Member of SOUE

I should like to update you on a few matters.

Firstly, the most recent Annual General Meeting of the Society, held last September, made changes to the constitution, widening the scope of full membership to include automatically all graduates of the department, and teaching and research staff of the department. The committee believes this will greatly enhance the reach and effectiveness of the Society.

Secondly, the committee proposes to transfer the data we hold on you to the University's new database system, DARS (Development and Alumni Relations System), from the end of May 2014. This system will hold the details of alumni, students, staff and friends previously held in separate alumni and development databases of the University and the participating colleges. It will be a single, comprehensive database allowing, on a regulated basis, all parts of the University to access all the data held in it. This will enable the details of alumni, students, staff and friends to be kept more up to date than previously, and will help improve our communications with you.

Be assured that your data will continue to be held securely, and that the data will be accessible only within the University. For full details on the way in which your data will be held and used, please see the Data Protection Statement enclosed. We hope that you will be happy for us to move the data held about you into DARS. Unless we hear back from you by the end of May, we will assume that you are content for the data we already hold on you to be transferred to the DARS system. However, if at any time you have any queries about the use of your personal data in DARS or wish to change the fact of, or extent of, use of your personal data, please contact Eva Williams, the Department of Engineering Science External Relations Officer, quoting your Alumni Card number. Eva's address and email address are given at the foot of this letter.

The Department continues to thrive. Some recent news is that Professor Lionel Tarassenko CBE has been appointed to take over as Head of Department from Professor Guy Houlsby, when he steps down in September. See below for a profile of Professor Tarassenko.

Lastly, here is a key date for your diary:

• The 2014 SOUE Jenkin Day will take place on Saturday 20th September, and the programme will include the 2014 Jenkin Lecture. The speaker will be Professor Paul Newman who will present the Oxford Robotcar project. There will be a further lecture by Professor Tarassenko titled: "The 2020 vision for Engineering Science in Oxford". Following the pattern of recent years, these will also form part of the programme of the 2014 University Alumni Weekend running from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st September. As usual, you will receive invitations to these events nearer the time.

We should be delighted to see you at these events.

Finally, I would like to remind members of the SOUE Group on LinkedIn which is growing in numbers. This provides an excellent way of staying in touch with alumni and seeking assistance in a wide variety of engineering disciplines. Details of how to join are on our website.

With my very best wishes

Martyn Hurst
President, SOUE

Enclosures:

• Data protection statement (PDF)
• Contact update form (PDF)
• Contact update form (Microsoft Word, editable)

For any queries concerning the transfer of SOUE members' data please contact:

Eva Williams, External Relations Officer
Department of Engineering Science
Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3PJ
E-mail: alumni@eng.ox.ac.uk

For more details of the University's data protection policy you may also like to visit the University's website: https://www.alumni.ox.ac.uk/data_protection.

A brief profile of Professor Lionel Tarassenko:

Professor Tarassenko holds the Chair of Electrical Engineering in the University of Oxford, and is a Fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He graduated from Keble College, Oxford, with a degree in Engineering Science and a DPhil in Medical Electronics. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE) in 1996, when he was also awarded the IEE Mather Premium for his work on neural networks, and to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2000. Professor Tarassenko has held a number of positions in academia and industry, and won multiple awards for his work in the area of signal processing, especially in the context of medical problems. He is also founder of a number of spin-out companies.