Professor Rob Massara

Rob has first-class BA (Hons) and PhD degrees in Electronic Engineering from the University of Essex. Before taking up an academic appointment, his industrial experience in UK industry was formed with Marconi-Elliot Microelectronics and GEC Semiconductors. His first academic role was as a Lecturer in Electronic Engineering at the University of Keele in (1975); he then joined the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering at Essex (ESE) in 1978 as a Lecturer, and was promoted to a Senior Lectureship in 1984, and then to a Chair in 1991.  Between 1992 and 1996, he was ESE's Head of Department.  His research interests centred on the application of computer-aided design within electronic engineering, particularly in the role of CAD and numerical optimisation techniques in the design of analogue and digital integrated circuits. He established the University’s interdisciplinary Research Centre for VLSI Systems Design and, within ESE, the Design Automation Laboratory.  These activities involved sustained and very active collaboration with industry, notably BT, GEC, Ericsson, and Fujitsu, and attracted substantial funding from these industrial partners, the EPSRC and the EU. He continues to hold the position of Emeritus Professor of Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex.

He held the senior management position at Essex of Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Resources) between 1997 and 2001 and was then appointed in 2001 as PVC (Research & Enterprise) involving direct responsibility to the Vice-Chancellor, taking the senior management team lead, for all aspects of the University's policy/strategy on research, knowledge transfer and enterprise. He held this role and that of Deputy VC until his retirement from Essex in 2011. In addition to these cross-cutting University roles, he became the PVC responsible for the Faculty of Social Sciences when the University moved to a Faculty structure in 2008. This involved responsibility for all aspects of the Faculty’s performance, both academic and financial.