The University of Warwick has announced today, Thursday 8^th January 2015, the names of nine people who are to be awarded honorary degrees at its winter degree ceremonies from 21^st to 23rd January 2015 including: The Chief Medical Officer for England; one of the UK’s leading chefs; the Chair of Arts Council England; and a leading figure from the world of opera.

Details on the dates and timings for media opportunities with each honorary graduate follow. Press should report to the box office of Warwick Arts Centre and then call or ask for Peter Dunn or Kelly Parkes-Harrison on their mobile numbers listed below. Short biographies on the each of the honorary graduands also then follow below.

Wednesday 21 January - Media opportunity 12 midday

Vivek Singh Hon DLitt (Honorary Doctor of Letters)
Prof David Cardwell Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

Wednesday 21 January Media opportunity 4pm

Dr Patricia Lewis LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Thursday 22 January - Media opportunity 12 midday

Professor Janet Hemingway Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor Of Science)
Sir Rory Collins Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor Of Science)
Dame Sally Davies Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor Of Science)

Thursday 22 January - Media opportunity 4pm

Sir Peter Bazalgette Hon DLitt (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

Friday, 23 January - Media opportunity 12 midday

Mr David Bintley Hon DLitt (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

Friday 23 January - Media opportunity 4pm

Dr Kanayo F Nwanze Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

Short Biographies of the Honorary Graduands

Mr Vivek Singh (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

Vivek Singh is Chief Executive and the founding chef of Westminster’s renowned Cinnamon Club. Since first opening its doors in 2001 at the old Westminster Library, The Cinnamon Club has been redefining the expectations of Indian cooking liberating Indian food crafting a brilliant marriage between Indian spicing and western culinary styles.

Vivek spurned family expectations to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an engineer, surprising them instead by announcing he wanted to become a chef. After graduating from catering college, Vivek joined the Oberoi Hotel Group as a specialist in Indian cuisine. He then joined the Grand Hotel in Calcutta where he was fast-tracked to become the Indian chef of Oberoi Group’s flagship Rajvilas hotel in Jaipur (which as ranked as one of the most luxurious hotels in the world by Tatler magazine).

From an early age, Vivek read Escoffier and later devoured books by Marco Pierre White and Charlie Trotter. When Iqbal Wahhab, the co-founder of The Cinnamon Club, talked to him about how he saw Indian flavours and western culinary styles being married, Vivek was already on the same page.

He authored The Cinnamon Club Cookbook in 2003, The Cinnamon Club Seafood, Cookbook in 2006, Curry: Classic and Contemporary in 2008, Cinnamon Kitchen The Cookbook in 2012, and Spice at Home in 2014. He is frequently a guest on TV cookery shows such as Saturday Kitchen, Masterchef and Market Kitchen and a regular face at food festival demos such as Taste of London and the BBC Good Food Show.

His second restaurant, Cinnamon Kitchen, which is located in the City of London’s redeveloped Devonshire Square, opened in 2008. In February 2012 Vivek hosted a sell-out pop-up restaurant at Demond’s in NYC on the Upper East Side, in March 2012 he launched his third restaurant Cinnamon Soho. In 2013 he launched Indian street food concept ‘Joho Soho’, a shabby-chic mobile street food that appeared at many festivals and events.

 

Professor David Cardwell (Honorary Doctor of Science)

David Cardwell studied Physics at the University of Warwick between 1980 and 1986, graduating with a BSc in 1983 and a PhD in 1987. He joined Plessey Research (Caswell) on completing his PhD prior to moving to Cambridge in 1992.

He is currently Professor of Superconducting Engineering in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, where he leads the Bulk Superconductivity Research Group on the processing and applications of bulk high temperature superconductors, which can be used to generate very high magnetic fields.

He was a founder member of the European Society of Applied Superconductivity (ESAS) in 1998 and has served as a Board member and Treasurer of the Society since 2007.

He is an active board member of five international journals, including Superconductor Science and Technology, and has authored over 300 technical papers and patents.

He established and led the successful European Forum on bulk superconductivity (EFFORT) between 2002 and 2008 and he was awarded the PASREG prize for excellence in the processing of bulk superconductors in 2001. He was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 in recognition of his contribution to the development of superconducting materials for engineering applications and he was appointed Head of the Cambridge Department of Engineering in October 2014, and is currently Chair of the University of Cambridge Board of Graduate Studies.



Dr Patricia Lewis Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)

Dr Patricia Lewis is the Research Director, International Security, at Chatham House. Her former posts include Deputy Director and Scientist-in-Residence at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies; Director of UNIDIR; and Director of VERTIC in London.

Dr Lewis served on the 2004-6 WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) Commission chaired by Dr Hans Blix; the 2010-2011 Advisory Panel on Future Priorities of the OPCW chaired by Ambassador Rolf Ekeus; and was an adviser to the 2008-10 International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND) chaired by Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi.

She holds a BSc (Hons) in physics from Manchester University and a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Birmingham. She is a dual national of the UK and Ireland. Dr Lewis is the recipient of the American Physical Society’s 2009 Joseph A Burton Forum Award recognizing 'outstanding contributions to the public understanding or resolution of issues involving the interface of physics and society'.

Professor Janet Hemingway CBE (Honorary Doctor Of Science)

Professor Hemingway initially trained as a geneticist and is currently Professor of Insect Molecular Biology and Director of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM). LSTM has 360 staff based in Liverpool, Malawi and several other tropical locations.

She has 30 years’ experience working on the biochemistry and molecular biology of specific enzyme systems associated with xenobiotic resistance. She has been PI on projects well in excess of £60 million including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation funded Innovative Vector Control Consortium.

She was: inaugurated as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2006; inaugurated as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 2008; conferred as Honorary Doctor of Science by Sheffield University in 2009; elected as a Foreign Associate to the National Academy of Scientists, USA 2010; elected as a Fellow to the American Academy of Microbiology 2011; and inaugurated as a Fellow of The Royal Society 2011. She was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Control of Tropical Disease Vectors in 2012.

Professor Sir Rory Collins Hon DSc (Honorary Doctor Of Science)

Rory Collins studied Medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, London University (1974-1980), and Statistics at George Washington University (1976-7), and at Oxford University (1982-3).

In 1985 he became co-director, with Professor Sir Richard Peto, of the University of Oxford's Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU). In 1996, he was appointed Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford, supported by the British Heart Foundation.

He became Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of the UK Biobank prospective study of 500,000 people in September 2005. From July 2013, he became the Head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health at Oxford University

His work has been in the establishment of large-scale epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, other vascular disease, and cancer. He was knighted in 2011 for his services to science.

Professor Dame Sally Davies (Honorary Doctor of Science)

Professor Dame Sally Davies is the Chief Medical Officer for England and advises the UK Government. She holds responsibility for Research and Development, and is the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department of Health.

As Chief Medical Officer she is the independent advisor to the UK Government on all medical matters, with particular responsibilities regarding Public Health. In particular, she provides professional leadership for Directors of Public Health in England.

The role of Chief Medical Officer carries the rank of Permanent Secretary and advises the Secretary of State for Health on medical matters. She is also the professional head of the Department’s medical staff and head of the Medical Civil Service. She supports the Health Secretary in strengthening the Government’s collective effort to protect, promote and improve health and wellbeing.

Dame Sally has been actively involved in NHS R&D from its establishment. As Director-General she established the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) with a budget of £1 billion.

Dame Sally is a member of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Executive Board. She led the UK delegation to the WHO Ministerial Summit in November 2004 and the WHO Forum on Health Research in November 2008. From 2000-2012 Dame Sally was a member of the WHO Global Advisory Committee on Health Research (ACHR). She also chaired the Expert Advisory Committee for the development of the WHO research strategy, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in May 2010. Dame Sally is a member of the International Advisory Committee for A*STAR, Singapore and has advised many others on research strategy and evaluation including the Australian NHMRC, Canadian CIHR and Norwegian Government.

Dame Sally was awarded a DBE (Dame Commander of the British Empire) in the New Year Honours 2009 for services to medicine, and in September 2011 she was conferred as Emeritus Professor at Imperial College London.

Sir Peter Bazalgette (Honorary Doctor of Letters)

Sir Peter Bazalgette is Chair of Arts Council England and former Chair of English National Opera and Crossness Engines, an embryonic steam museum.

Sir Peter also has a number of media interests, serving on the Boards of market researcher YouGov, and digital advertiser MirriAd and is on the Advisory Board of advertiser, BBH. In the world of Television he is the president of The Royal Television Society and a non-executive director of ITV. He previously worked as a television producer for 30 years devising several internationally successful formats.

One of the most influential figures in British television, he has said that one of his big achievements is "making facts as entertaining as possible".

He famously brought the show Big Brother to the UK from the Netherlands and he is responsible for creating formats such as Ready Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force, which have become international successes.

Mr David Bintley (Honorary Doctor of Letters)
 
 Ballet Director, choreographer and dancer David Bintley completed his training at the Royal Ballet School before joining Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet. He was an outstanding character dancer, particularly noted for the title role in Petrushka, and Alain and Widow Simone in La Fille mal gardée. The company’s director, Peter Wright, encouraged his desire to choreograph and his first professional piece, The Outsider, was created soon after.

From 1986 to 1993 Bintley moved from resident choreographer for Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet to the same post at Covent Garden before, from 1993, working freelance, creating ballets around the world. In 1995 he was appointed Director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and from 2010 to 2014 took on the additional role of Artistic Director of the National Ballet of Japan. His works range from one-act pieces such as the early, gently elegaic Flowers of the Forest (1985), the exquisitely classical Tombeaux (1993), the poignant ‘Still Life’ at the Penguin Café (1988) and the varied jazz-based pieces of the last decade or so, including The Shakespeare Suite and The Orpheus Suite. His full-evening works include the witty balletic re-workings of Hobson’s Choice (1989) and Cyrano (2007), to the powerfully dramatic, such as Edward II (1995) and his Arthur cycle (2000-2001). He was appointed a CBE in 2001. His ballet E=mc2 won the last ever South Bank Dance award in 2009, and his new version of Cinderella was screened on BBC2 and BBC4 as the 2010 Christmas ballet. His most recent creations include the Olympics-inspired Faster (2012), the British premiere (2013) of his spectacular Aladdin, and the British premiere (2014) of The Prince of the Pagodas, both created for the National Ballet of Japan.

 

Dr Kanayo F Nwanze DSc (Honorary Doctor of Science)

 On 13 February 2013, Kanayo F Nwanze was appointed by acclamation as President of IFAD (The International Fund for Agricultural Development - a specialized agency of the United Nations) for a second four-year term. A Nigerian national, Nwanze has a strong record as an advocate and leader with a keen understanding of complex development issues. He has over 35 years of experience across three continents, focusing on poverty reduction through agriculture, rural development and research.

Under Nwanze’s guidance, IFAD has stepped up its advocacy efforts to ensure that agriculture is a central part of the international development agenda, and that governments recognize the concerns of smallholder farmers and other poor rural people. As an intellectual leader on issues of food security, Nwanze has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Food Security since 2010, and formerly chaired the group.

 

During Nwanze’s tenure, IFAD has increased the number of programme managers and country offices based in directly in the field. This heightened field presence enhances IFAD’s direct supervision of its projects, benefiting individual countries, partner institutions and project participants alike. IFAD has become a highly valued and results-focused international development partner, is delivering a much larger programme of loans and grants, and is extending its reach to more people.

For further information please contact:
 
Peter Dunn, email: p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk
Director of Press and Policy, University of Warwick,
Tel: +44(0)24 76 523708 Mobile/Cell +44(0)7767 655860

Or

Kelly Parkes-Harrison, Press and Communications Manager
University of Warwick
Telephone: 0247 615 0868
Mobile: 07824 540863
email: k.e.parkes@warwick.ac.uk

PR2 8^th January 2015