Ian Postlethwaite

Ian Postlethwaite is Professor Emeritus of Newcastle University after retiring from the University in May 2022. At Newcastle, he held a number of senior management positions including Director of Corporate Projects, CEO and Dean (Singapore), and most recently Acting Head of Engineering.

Ian read Electrical Engineering at Imperial College and completed a PhD in Control Engineering at Cambridge. He held posts at Cambridge and Oxford before accepting a Chair in Engineering at Leicester University, aged 34. At Leicester, he was Head of Engineering, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (External Affairs) and Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), moving to Northumbria University as Deputy Vice-Chancellor in 2010. He joined Newcastle University in 2015.

His research involved theoretical contributions to the field of robust multivariable control and the application of advanced control system design to engineering systems. He has held visiting positions at the Australian National University and the University of California at Berkeley and made many shorter visits to major research groups such as MIT, UC Santa Barbara, Tsinghua and Trondheim.

He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, has published more than 430 refereed papers and co-authored the highly regarded graduate textbook Multivariable Feedback Control (Wiley, 1996 and 2005), which alone has received more than 10,000 citations (Google Scholar).

Ian lives in Newcastle with his partner, Elizabeth Rogers. They have two daughters, Stella and Rosa.