TU Delft’s JM Burgers visiting professor, Lord Julian Hunt, is internationally renowned as a leading figure in the areas of climate change, global warming, rising sea levels and natural disasters.
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He is also a member of Britain’s House of Lords. Lord Hunt combines his scientific expertise and political clout to help solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues.
Listening to Lord Hunt speak, it quickly became apparent that here was a man deeply committed to applying his scientific knowledge to solving some of the world’s biggest environmental problems. Having obtained both his engineering Bachelor and PhD degrees at Cambridge University, Lord Hunt is now a professor at University College London (UCL) and JM Burgers visiting professor at TU Delft.
Lord Hunt’s education has served him well: He was the Director-General and Chief Executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992-1997. During his tenure there, vast improvements were made. “At that time, in the early 1990s, the kind of error in tracking a cyclone was about 220km for 24 hours ahead,” Lord Hunt recalls. “In other words, 24 hours ahead you didn’t know where this hurricane would be to within 220km, which was pretty bad really. We greatly improved the forecasting, and now, for example, with the amazing Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, they were within 60km three days ahead.”
Lord Hunt was deeply involved in creating awareness of acid rain in the 1960s and 70s, and his current commitment to climate change, natural disasters, flooding and sustainable development takes him all over the world. For the past four years, Lord Hunt has been working in the area of natural disaster prediction at TU Delft’s Hydraulics Lab, where he and his colleagues have been researching the edge of a jet, noting the similarities between it and the edge of a hurricane. Their work has recently been published in the American Physical Review and The Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
Lord Hunt is an advocate of combining science and politics to achieve environmental goals. As a member of both the scientific and political communities, he’s perfectly positioned to view the interaction between these groups. He believes there are three elements necessary to affect environmental change: scientific validity; social validity (the recognition that a problem exists and must be dealt with); and a technical solution, which is both technical and economical. These three elements are at the root of sustainable solutions and must be in place before governments will respond.
In 1997, Lord Hunt accepted the position of JM Burgers Visiting Professor at TU Delft. He’s candid when speaking of TU Delft as an international university. He cites his own collaboration with professors and students from different countries as a good example of the university’s international appeal. And he is particularly proud of the international feel of TU Delft’s Hydraulics Lab: “Because of the openness and flow of ideas between people of different countries and backgrounds, the Delft Lab is one of the best, if not the best, turbulence labs in Europe.”
New ways
Despite the international feel of TU Delft, Lord Hunt feels the university could do more in terms of increasing the ethnic diversity of the student population. He cites his experiences at his home university, University College London, as a fine example of an ethnically diverse school: approximately 50% of UCL’s students are ethnic minorities.
Lord Hunt believes that diversity is increasing becoming a part of the modern world and that some of Holland’s largest universities do not yet reflect the ethnic diversity that exists in the country. He suggests that universities, like TU Delft, that want to be truly international, could try to reach visible minorities by recruiting students from ethically diverse secondary schools for special summer programs.
Lord Hunt sees TU Delft making great strides in the creation of spin-off companies and commercialization: “Such areas generally involve international collaboration and TU Delft has the right environment for such endeavors.” As an example of this, he cites his own spin-off company – Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) . which he created when he was a professor at Cambridge University.
CERC is involved with environmental and air pollution modeling and has developed a successful software package in this field. Interestingly, CERC is now collaborating with a TU Delft spin-off company called, Flow Motion. They are currently working on some contracts within the Netherlands and are hoping to be involved in areas of greater concern, such as air pollution at Schiphol Airport and problems associated with major road works in the Netherlands.
Lord Hunt’s CV would seem to be the dream career of many TU Delft students. What then is his advice for students who want to further their international career aspirations? Lord Hunt emphatically stated the importance of students traveling to other universities to make contacts. He suggested making the most of these contacts by attending international conferences as often as possible and by being candid and up-front – “a little bit North American, as it were,” he adds.
Lord Hunt is also keen on the idea of students taking advantage of what he calls “one of the new ways of the world”; namely, non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He suggested students look into ‘Engineers without Borders’, an agency akin to the world renowned ‘Doctors without Borders’.
Lord Hunt related his own experiences with NGOs. As a post-graduate student, he applied the basics of his engineering education by putting bicycle wheels on metal chairs in an effort to help polio victims move around banana fields in Uganda. As the current head of an NGO, Lord Hunt is committed to bringing science to places such as Africa and Russia, in an effort to address some of the world’s worst environmental problems. He sees some exciting opportunities in this area for the EU and the Netherlands: “The Netherlands is a very progressive country in terms of supporting such development projects around the world.”
Lord Julian Hunt (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
Listening to Lord Hunt speak, it quickly became apparent that here was a man deeply committed to applying his scientific knowledge to solving some of the world’s biggest environmental problems. Having obtained both his engineering Bachelor and PhD degrees at Cambridge University, Lord Hunt is now a professor at University College London (UCL) and JM Burgers visiting professor at TU Delft.
Lord Hunt’s education has served him well: He was the Director-General and Chief Executive of the British Meteorological Office from 1992-1997. During his tenure there, vast improvements were made. “At that time, in the early 1990s, the kind of error in tracking a cyclone was about 220km for 24 hours ahead,” Lord Hunt recalls. “In other words, 24 hours ahead you didn’t know where this hurricane would be to within 220km, which was pretty bad really. We greatly improved the forecasting, and now, for example, with the amazing Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, they were within 60km three days ahead.”
Lord Hunt was deeply involved in creating awareness of acid rain in the 1960s and 70s, and his current commitment to climate change, natural disasters, flooding and sustainable development takes him all over the world. For the past four years, Lord Hunt has been working in the area of natural disaster prediction at TU Delft’s Hydraulics Lab, where he and his colleagues have been researching the edge of a jet, noting the similarities between it and the edge of a hurricane. Their work has recently been published in the American Physical Review and The Journal of Fluid Mechanics.
Lord Hunt is an advocate of combining science and politics to achieve environmental goals. As a member of both the scientific and political communities, he’s perfectly positioned to view the interaction between these groups. He believes there are three elements necessary to affect environmental change: scientific validity; social validity (the recognition that a problem exists and must be dealt with); and a technical solution, which is both technical and economical. These three elements are at the root of sustainable solutions and must be in place before governments will respond.
In 1997, Lord Hunt accepted the position of JM Burgers Visiting Professor at TU Delft. He’s candid when speaking of TU Delft as an international university. He cites his own collaboration with professors and students from different countries as a good example of the university’s international appeal. And he is particularly proud of the international feel of TU Delft’s Hydraulics Lab: “Because of the openness and flow of ideas between people of different countries and backgrounds, the Delft Lab is one of the best, if not the best, turbulence labs in Europe.”
New ways
Despite the international feel of TU Delft, Lord Hunt feels the university could do more in terms of increasing the ethnic diversity of the student population. He cites his experiences at his home university, University College London, as a fine example of an ethnically diverse school: approximately 50% of UCL’s students are ethnic minorities.
Lord Hunt believes that diversity is increasing becoming a part of the modern world and that some of Holland’s largest universities do not yet reflect the ethnic diversity that exists in the country. He suggests that universities, like TU Delft, that want to be truly international, could try to reach visible minorities by recruiting students from ethically diverse secondary schools for special summer programs.
Lord Hunt sees TU Delft making great strides in the creation of spin-off companies and commercialization: “Such areas generally involve international collaboration and TU Delft has the right environment for such endeavors.” As an example of this, he cites his own spin-off company – Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants (CERC) . which he created when he was a professor at Cambridge University.
CERC is involved with environmental and air pollution modeling and has developed a successful software package in this field. Interestingly, CERC is now collaborating with a TU Delft spin-off company called, Flow Motion. They are currently working on some contracts within the Netherlands and are hoping to be involved in areas of greater concern, such as air pollution at Schiphol Airport and problems associated with major road works in the Netherlands.
Lord Hunt’s CV would seem to be the dream career of many TU Delft students. What then is his advice for students who want to further their international career aspirations? Lord Hunt emphatically stated the importance of students traveling to other universities to make contacts. He suggested making the most of these contacts by attending international conferences as often as possible and by being candid and up-front – “a little bit North American, as it were,” he adds.
Lord Hunt is also keen on the idea of students taking advantage of what he calls “one of the new ways of the world”; namely, non-governmental organizations (NGOs). He suggested students look into ‘Engineers without Borders’, an agency akin to the world renowned ‘Doctors without Borders’.
Lord Hunt related his own experiences with NGOs. As a post-graduate student, he applied the basics of his engineering education by putting bicycle wheels on metal chairs in an effort to help polio victims move around banana fields in Uganda. As the current head of an NGO, Lord Hunt is committed to bringing science to places such as Africa and Russia, in an effort to address some of the world’s worst environmental problems. He sees some exciting opportunities in this area for the EU and the Netherlands: “The Netherlands is a very progressive country in terms of supporting such development projects around the world.”
Lord Julian Hunt (Photo: Sam Rentmeester/FMAX)
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