Cranfield alumnus and Chairman of Advanced Composite Structures Australia, Professor Murray Leslie Scott (MSc Aircraft Design 1981), FTSE, FRAeS, FAICD, FAIM, FIEAust, CPEng, is the 2019 winner of the prestigious biennial Lawrence Hargrave Award of the Royal Aeronautical Society Australian Division for an Australian who has made a significant contribution to Australian aviation.
The award was presented by the Australian Division Past President Air Vice Marshal Noel Schmidt, AM CSC FRAeS, at the 18th Australian International Aerospace Congress (AIAC) Dinner on 25th February in Melbourne.
The Australian Division of the Royal Aeronautical Society established the Lawrence Hargrave Award 20 years ago to recognise achievement at all levels and in all disciplines of aerospace within Australia. The Lawrence Hargrave Award honours one of Australia’s true pioneers of flight. Hargrave’s experiments with box kites at Stanwell Park near Sydney in the 1890s proved to be one of the most significant early developments in aviation.
Professor Murray Scott has over 35 years’ experience in the field of aerospace engineering. He has made an outstanding contribution to the design and manufacturing of advanced fibre-composite aerospace structures, primarily as CEO of the Cooperative Research Centre [CRC] for Advanced Composite Structures. This CRC underpinned the design and production of advanced composite structures for the Boeing 787 wings – a notable highlight for Australia’s aerospace manufacturing capability. He has also played pivotal leadership roles in establishing other high-value R&D programs such as CRCACS Helicopter Composite Structures (2007); Defence Materials Technology Centre (2008); CRC-ACS Extension Program (2010); and Innovative Manufacturing CRC (2015).
In 1992, Murray founded the ‘Australian Composite Structures Society’, a Technical Society of Engineers Australia, which has been instrumental in fostering expertise in advanced composites in Australia. He co-edited the book “Composite Materials for Aircraft Structures”, now in its third edition, which holds a unique place in AIAA publications, as it is still the only book on such an important topic and represents a ‘Team Australia’ effort. He has also brought a considerable international focus to Australia’s capabilities in aeronautics and composites through attracting major international conferences to the southern hemisphere, several for the first time. He was also a co-founder of the AIAC congress series which started in 1985 and chaired the Congress in 2005. This major event has now reached the 18th in the series with AIAC18 currently being held in Melbourne aligned with the biennial Australian International Air Show at Avalon.
Due to his many company and academic appointments, Professor Murray Scott has been elected Honorary Fellow of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS) and also served a two-year term as President, and is also a World Fellow of the International Committee on Composite Materials (ICCM) and has served a term as President. He also has been for many years Chairman of the EA / RAeS Joint Board for Aerospace Engineering.
Cranfield University congratulates Professor Murray Scott on receiving the Lawrence Hargrave Award and for his major contributions to the development of advanced composite materials and structures.