FULLY BOOKED
Please note, that while we are currently over subscribed for the event we will accept bookings on the day for Civil and Environmental Engineering Alumni only. Please enquire at our registration desk.
Join CEE’s flagship event to reconnect with fellow alumni, expand your network, and explore the future of Civil and Environmental Engineering with sector leaders. Reconnect. Reflect. Celebrate.
Join us for a unique and meaningful event as we celebrate 141 years of real impact—impact we’ve made, and the impact we will continue to make together.
Alumni Connections is our inaugural alumni engagement event, bringing together graduates of Civil and Environmental Engineering for an afternoon of insight and an evening of celebration. Whether you’re returning to campus for the first time in years or staying connected to today’s research, innovation, and education, we’d love you to be part of this special occasion.
The programme
The event begins inside the Department with a keynote address from Professor Chris Johnson, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (UK Government). This will be followed by a dynamic panel discussion on how innovation and sustainability are shaping the future of civil and environmental engineering.
You’ll also have the opportunity to tour our cutting-edge labs, meet current students and view a showcase of our latest work, and reconnect with fellow alumni over refreshments
In the evening, we invite you to a black-tie dinner with live music, where we’ll raise a toast to our shared legacy and the lasting impact of our community—celebrating those who are with us and remembering those who has passed.
We’ll reflect on the sustained and significant global impact of our alumni and look ahead to a collective future where we continue to work together to shape the world.
Whether you’re returning to campus for the first time in years or staying connected to today’s research, innovation, and education, we’d love you to be part of this celebration
Registration via – https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/alumni-connections-a-festive-celebration-of-our-people-and-impact-tickets-1530048278589?aff=oddtdtcreator
Please note, this registration link is strictly for alumni of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. For current Imperial staff or students interested in attending please email our events team directly t.gordon@imperial.ac.uk
Alumni are invited to attend the full event, or either Part I (Afternoon Programme) or Part II (Evening Celebration).
Full Agenda:
13:30 – Registration
14:00–17:00 – Part I: Welcome back to the Department
- Keynote: Professor Chris Johnson CBE (Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Government)
- Panel: ‘Building the Future: The Next Era of Civil & Environmental Engineering’.
- Moderator: Professor Jean Venables CBE (class of ’69).
- Panellists: Roger Bailey (Chief Technical Officer at Thames Tideway, class of ’81), Anhad Narula (Chairman at Africa Plus Partners, class of ’02), Dr Mireille El Hajj (CEO at Astraterra, classes of ’10 and ’17). Further panellists to be announced.
- Networking reception: Join us for a tour of our world leading labs, hear from researchers and students about our current research, and mingle with peers.
– Programme break –
18:30-22:30 – Part II: Black-tie dinner with champagne welcome and live music (surcharge £100)
Speakers:
Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng CBE
Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng is Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Chair Professor in Positioning and Navigation Systems at Imperial College London. He is also the Director of Imperial’s Centre for Active Resilience and Security (CARS).
Washington is a renowned expert in infrastructure resilience, trans-modal mobility, positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) systems and geomatics. Ochieng is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of the Royal academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN), Institution of Highways and Transportation and the Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors. He holds multiple high-profile positions, including President of RIN, Board Member of the Science Museum Group, Chair of the Science Museum Advisory Board, and Member of advisory councils at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Department of Transport (DfT) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).
Professor Chris Johnson
Professor Chris Johnson is the Chief Scientific Adviser in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) having taken up the role in July 2024. Prior to this, he served as Pro Vice Chancellor for Engineering and Physical Sciences at Queen’s University, Belfast (2020-24) and Head of Computing Science in Glasgow University (2014-2020).
Chris’ research interests lie at the intersection of cyber security and the engineering of safety-critical systems, in applications where it is not possible to halt operation and analyse potential malware without creating significant safety concerns. He helped lead the Department for Transport (DfT) review of UK airports, airlines and air traffic organisations that informed the National Cybersecurity Strategy for Aviation. He set up cyber security labs for the UK Civil Nuclear Industry. He was SG Chair of the National Cyber Security Centre’s Community of Interest in Industrial Control Systems. He is a member of the National Cyber Advisory Board (NCAB) appointed to support the implementation of the UK Cyber Strategy.
His early work helped deliver a range of analysis techniques to identify lessons learned from previous failures. He subsequently served as an expert witness to the Grenfell Tower public inquiry where he helped identify recommendations to improve data and communications across the UK emergency services.
His more recent work has delivered techniques for the ethical introduction of machine learning in military systems, including safety and security requirements, on behalf of the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD).
He has held fellowships from NASA, as well as the US Air Force and the US Navy (Office of Naval Research).
Professor Jean Venables CBE – BSc Civil Engineering (‘69)
Jean is a Chartered Civil Engineer and Environmentalist with an MSc in Public Health Engineering and a distinguished career in water and wastewater engineering, flood risk management, and environmental consultancy. She was the first woman President of the Institution of Civil Engineers (2008/09) in its 190-year history and has held senior roles with the Environment Agency, Thames Estuary Partnership, and the Association of Drainage Authorities.
Jean has extensive experience in professional development, lecturing, and chairing high-level committees, and is the author of Preparing for the Professional Reviews of the Institution of Civil Engineers. She has received numerous honours for her contributions to civil engineering, including an MBE, OBE, and CBE. Jean holds Visiting Professorships at Imperial College London, Southampton, and Strathclyde Universities.
Roger Bailey – BSc Civil Engineering (‘81)
Roger joined the Thames Tideway Tunnel project in February 2012. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers and has held board level positions in both civil engineering contracting businesses and engineering and planning consultancies prior to joining the project. The first 20 years of his career was in the geotechnical contracting sector (mining, piling and ground engineering) in the UK and overseas followed by over 10 years in transportation consultancy (highways, rail, aviation) for clients such as Crossrail, Network Rail, TfL, Highways Agency and the Department for Transport. Roger’s Completion & Handover Team at Tideway is responsible for technical oversight, property and commercial agreements, compliance with planning permission, system commissioning and the operational integration of the completed Thames Tideway Tunnel asset into the existing London sewer network. Having spent over 12 years at the heart of decision making and delivery on the project Roger is uniquely able to reflect on its critical success factors as it nears completion.
Mireille El Hajj – MSc Transport (‘10) and PhD (‘17)
Dr Mireille Elhajj is the founder of London-based boutique consultancy Astra-Terra, a company specialised in PNT and smart solutions. She is also Visiting Professor at Imperial’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Previously, she was a Lecturer and an “Infrastructure and Space Science Fellow” at the Institute of Security Science and Resilience. She has published various papers in Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT), Interference mitigation and novel integrity monitoring methods for multiple applications in telematics and smart cities. She completed her PhD at imperial on the use of new GPS signals to improve accuracy for surface transport.
Peri Smith – MSc Control Systems Eng, Department of Electrical and Electronic Eng (’07), PhD Civil and Environmental Engineering (’17)
Peri is an Electrical and Electronic Engineer who completed her doctorate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is the Director of Systems Engineering and Integration
at global consultancy Ricardo (a member of WSP) and has attained over 20 years of engineering and management expertise working
across a number of industries. This ranges from the commercial aviation flight simulation industry to mainline, metro and subsurface railway
projects in the UK and Australia and for global clients.
Her experience involves the delivery of organisational change in the technical Systems Integration arena working across multiple engineering disciplines and technology and she has led award-winning projects and project teams, including for the ‘Performance improvement in the public sector at London Overground’.
Caroline Field
Caroline Field leads National Resilience at PA Consulting. She is an expert in resilience, spearheading an integrated, systems-based approach to understanding threats, vulnerabilities, and opportunities – helping clients determine the best strategy for investing in resilience measures to enable their strategic objectives. Caroline has a background in asset and infrastructure resilience with over 30 years of professional experience including 18 years in counter-terrorism, blast mitigation, and physical security and 25 years in earthquake engineering and dynamics. She has spent the past 15 years combining this expertise with the social and people aspects of resilience, focusing on the resilience and adaptive capacity (of people and organisations). Caroline brings expertise in resilient leadership and decision making – catalysing behaviour change in organisations and communities to deliver greater resilience. She is accredited in resilient leadership and has expertise in systems-based decision making to de-silo and prioritise resilience building efforts – understanding interdependencies and linking resilience to measured strategic outcomes.
Caroline is active in developing standards for resilience. She was Chair of the recently published International Standard on Urban Resilience (ISO22371) and is the Lead of the Measuring Resilience Working Group for the UK Resilience Academy. She is co-founder of the Centre for Whole of Society Resilience and is supporting Imperial College with the Centre for Active Resilience & Security (CARS).
Benson Tam – BSc Civil Engineering (‘84)
Benson Tam is Founder and CEO of Venturous Group. Tam founded Venturous Group in 2019. With his expertise as a “3-in-1” civil, software and financial engineer, combined with 30 years of private equity investing in Asia, Benson has built an extensive track 9 of 10
record. His experience spans venture capital and private equity investments, M&A, Internet, tech, corporate finance and strategy with a clear focus on China, being based in Beijing for the last 20 years. Before that, he worked globally in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, San Francisco and London.
He started his finance career at S.G. Warburg in London and continued with East Asia Warburg in Hong Kong. In 1992, he transitioned to private equity at Hellman & Friedman Asia and later became a Partner at Fidelity Growth Partners Asia, Fidelity’s China venture capital and private equity platform, where he spent 10 years and was involved in multiple successful “Super-Unicorns” such as Alibaba, AsiaInfo and Wuxi AppTec.