Dr Allan McRobie

On returning to England he took a further Masters degree, this time in structural engineering, and worked for a time in London with Ove Arup and Partners on nuclear waste disposal. He then returned to Brisbane, this time to work for another company designing bridges, a subject with which he is very much in tune. However, a marriage break-up leaving him with three children under the age of five led Allan back to university in England and a study of mathematics ('that's something you can work on after the kids go to bed'). He studied the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics at London University for 5 years before being appointed a lecturer in structural engineering in Cambridge. 'The joy of working in the Engineering Department here is that it is so multi-disciplinary. Take the work we are doing on the Millennium Bridge. Where else would you get structural engineers working with signal processing engineers on the same project?