2 November 2022
Dr Carol Marsh OBE, Head of Digital Systems at communications technology company Celestia UK, has been named the University of Strathclyde’s Alumna of the Year 2022.
The award was made in recognition of her outstanding career, her appointment as the First Woman Chair of the Institute of Engineering & Technology (IET) Council in 2021, and the award of her OBE in 2020 for her work promoting diversity and inclusion in electronic engineering.
Dr Marsh is a Chartered Engineer, EUR ING, and Past President of the Women’s Engineering Society, who has had a distinguished career in industry and academia, winning a plethora of awards in technology and for inspiring women in engineering.
She is also a Royal Academy of Engineering Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University, a Fellow of the Institute of Engineers in Scotland (IES) and Women’s Engineering Society WES, a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), member of the Institute of Physics (IoP) and International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR ).
Professor Sir Jim McDonald, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde, said: “Carol is a truly inspiring engineer and someone who has helped to encourage other women to forge careers in engineering and led new ways to tackle the gender imbalance in the engineering profession.
“Throughout her near-40-year career, Carol has amassed a huge wealth of knowledge and industrial experience at a senior level and her incredible contribution to engineering has been widely recognised. We are delighted to honour her with this award.”
Dr Marsh said: “It is a very great honour to be given this award and I am so happy to receive it. I am very thankful to the University of Strathclyde for this recognition. It gives me inspiration and encouragement to do more, not only to shine a light on engineering as a career but also to promote STEM and women engineers. It is a very special day.”
Graduating with a HND in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Edinburgh Napier University in 1985, Dr Marsh was subsequently awarded a degree of Doctor of Engineering [EngD] in System Level Integration from the Universities of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt in 2011.
She has held positions including Senior Design Engineer for GEC Marconi Avionics, becoming their first engineer to produce a design using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA); principal digital design and FPGA engineer roles at BAE Systems and ECS Technology; and as Deputy Head of Electronics Engineering at Leonardo, where she was responsible for overseeing the company’s electronic processes, tools and resource planning as well as promoting STEM, diversity and was the Firmware design authority.
She was appointed Head of Digital Systems at Celestia UK in April 2022 and is responsible for expanding the digital systems capabilities for satcoms, signal processing algorithms and distributed platforms which augment Celestia UK’s radio frequency and antenna expertise.
Her appointment comes at a pivotal moment for the business, supporting its current growth trajectory. Celestia UK is developing the next generation of Ka-Band very high throughput gateways for satcoms and aero terminals.
In addition Dr Marsh has presented at over 30 conferences and published 8 papers, including 2 journal papers.