It is with great sadness that we learned that Professor Julian Morris FREng died on Saturday 21 November 2020 after a brave and prolonged battle with cancer.
Julian was a co-founder of the Centre for Process Analytics and Control Technology (CPACT) in 1997. Without his vision and awareness of the importance of collaboration between industry and academia, CPACT would never have started; he was so proud that membership of the consortium had grown to 40 organisations across the world.
Many of you will know Julian as an internationally renowned expert in industrial process control and especially in the field of multivariate statistical process control. He was without doubt a thought-leader in multi-disciplinary collaboration and an enthusiastic proponent of international cooperation in research.
Following his first degree and PhD at Newcastle University, Julian worked for three years with Merz and McLellan, the Newcastle international consulting Engineers before joining the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at Newcastle University. Julian was head of the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering and Advanced Materials from 2002-2005 after which he retired. Julian was also part of the team that established the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) in the Northeast of England in 2004, which has become an integral part of the innovation landscape in the UK in support of the process industries. He was a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Institute of Measurement and Control and a past Fellow of the IEE.
Julian remained active up to the end through his roles as Emeritus Professor of Process Control at Newcastle University, Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, and of course as the joint Technical Director of CPACT. Throughout his career, he focussed on solving complex manufacturing control issues in the process industries ranging from pharmaceuticals to iron and steel. He was an early pioneer of Industrial Informatics, although it was not called that in the 1990s. Julian and his research team at Newcastle initiated and developed the concept of Soft Sensors, which is becoming an increasing important part of integrated process performance monitoring. Julian was also part of the team that established the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) in the Northeast of England in 2004, which has become an integral part of the innovation landscape in the UK in support of the process industries.
Julian Morris received many accolades during his distinguished career which will be recalled in other ways at another time, but he was especially proud of two. In 2019, he received a DSc degree from Newcastle University and in 2015, he was named in the Medicine Makers Top 100 Power List as one of the most influential people in the world in drug development and manufacturing; one of only 11 UK based experts on the list.