OMEGA appoints chief

OMEGA – MMU’s £5million aviation project has appointed senior civil servant Roger Gardner as its chief executive.

Mr Gardner is currently Head of Air Quality and Environmental Technology at the Department for Transport and is responsible for UK and international policy advice on noise, emissions and air quality.

He will take up the post on January 1, 2007 and will be based at the Centre for Air Transport and the Environment (CATE) at MMU’s Faculty of Science and Engineering.

OMEGA was announced by Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling in May 2006 in a bid to help the aviation industry meet the environmental challenge.

Knowledge Transfer

The £5 million government-funded project will link the universities, government, industry and pressure groups in a common goal to foster knowledge transfer from research centres (the universities) to industry to ensure aviation can grow in an environmentally sustainable way.

Professor David Raper, Director of CATE, said: "Aviation brings huge social and economic benefits to the North-West, the UK and beyond but also poses serious environmental challenges.

"The OMEGA Project intends to provide the best science to industry and to government in terms of technological development, environmental impacts and socio-economics.

"We are delighted to appoint Roger Gardner as he is highly-skilled in developing stakeholder relations on aviation environmental issues, is an excellent communicator and has experience of aviation forums in the UK and worldwide."

World-class research

Professor Raper will be chief scentific adviser to OMEGA, supported by Professor David Lee, whose research earlier this year showed that aviation would account for 5% of the world’s carbon emissions by 2050.

For more about the Centre for Air Transport and the Environment, go to www.cate.mmu.ac.uk