Professor Cardwell, who is currently Head of the Department of Engineering will be a strong academic voice at the centre of the University’s strategy and financial planning.
Professor Cardwell will take up the post of Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy and Planning on 1 August 2018. This follows the departure of Professor Duncan Maskell, who is leaving Cambridge to become Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.
Professor Cardwell has been at Cambridge since 1992 and, since 2014, has been Head of the Department of Engineering, where he also leads the Bulk Superconductivity Research Group on the processing and applications of bulk high temperature superconductors. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2012 and has been a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College since 1993.
The five Pro-Vice-Chancellors are responsible for taking forward the University’s strategy and policy development, and supporting the Vice-Chancellor in providing institutional leadership to the University. The remits of the other four Pro-Vice-Chancellors include education, research, institutional and international relations and enterprise and business relations.
The role of the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Strategy and Planning is to support and strengthen the academic mission of the University through overseeing the distribution of resources, including the capital programme. Professor Cardwell will be a strong academic voice at the centre of the University’s financial planning and budgeting.
Professor Cardwell said: “I’m delighted to be joining the senior management team of the University, as it enters a critical, but exciting, period of development. The role of PVC for Strategy and Planning relates directly to many areas of my experience to date within collegiate Cambridge, and I’m looking forward enormously to working with others across the institution to address the increasing number of challenges facing a world-leading University.”
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen Toope, said: “David has an impressive track record both as a researcher and in leading the Engineering department through a period of ambitious development that has seen the opening of the innovative Dyson Centre for Engineering Design and the construction of a new Civil Engineering building in West Cambridge.
"Together with my senior colleagues, I very much look forward to working with David to ensure that we have the resources we need for our University to continue to be globally influential.”