It has come to our attention that Professor Derek O. Northwood, Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Engineering Materials in the Department of Mechanical, Automotive and Materials Engineering at the University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario, Canada, retired as of 1 March 2021.

Professor Northwood has an earned doctorate in chemical physics (crystallography) from the University of Surrey (UK) and a BSc (Eng) in engineering metallurgy from the Imperial College, University of London (UK). He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Ontario, Canada (PEng) and is a Chartered Professional Engineer (CPEng; NER), APEC Engineer, and International Professional Engineer (IntPE(AUS)), in Australia. In the 40+ years as an academic, Professor Northwood has held various administrative positions including Department Head, Dean, Associate Dean of Research, Director of the Office of Research Services, President of the Industrial Research Institute and Research Leadership Chair, both at the University of Windsor and Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada.

Professor Northwood has taught, researched and facilitated joint research and educational programmes at 14 universities worldwide, including the UK, the USA, Australia, Taiwan, China, Singapore and Canada. He has published 700 papers in refereed international journals and conference proceedings, 9 chapters in books and has edited 9 books, on a wide range of topics, including materials and their applications, and engineering and technology education. Professor Northwood was recently recognised as being among the world’s top 100,000 - or top 2% of scientists - according to the database published by Stanford University. The database recognises the long-term career performance of scientists around the world, living or deceased, who are the most cited authors in their disciplines. It reflects six citation metrics, including total citations and number of citations to papers as single or first author between 1965 and 2019. The data was collected from the Scopus database of nearly 7 million authors out of which the top 100,000/2% were analysed.

He has been elected Fellow of six international professional societies in Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA; namely, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC); Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia (FIEAust); Fellow of the World Institute for Engineering and Technology Education (FWIETE); Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM); Fellow of ASM International (FASM); and Fellow of Alpha Sigma Mu (FAΣM) (The International Professional Honor Society for Materials Science and Engineering, for the field of materials science and engineering). In 2018, he was elected as a Member of the EU Academy of Sciences (EUAS).

According to Professor Northwood, over the years, he has greatly benefited from his association with the UICEE and WIETE, the conferences and the people. Life-long friends and wonderful memories. With the UICEE, there were five series of conferences, all of which had their own character and highlights. Those were:

During this time, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, became a partner institution of the UICEE, and the Ryerson Centre for Engineering Education became a satellite centre of the UICEE.

Professor Northwood also noted that the formation of the WIETE opened up a new series of conferences, new friends and more memories. The conference series were:

In his words: MSETE, in Athens, confirmed our love of the city and its hospitality. EADE exposed us to the world of architecture, its thinking and design philosophy.

Professor Northwood also offered the following highlights of his papers/presentations, coincidentally, according to him, they both were from 2003.

Over the years, Professor Northwood has received a number of awards from the UICEE/WIETE. These include:

Professor Northwood’s message about his retirement concluded with the following passage: I would like to end with what was part of my Welcome Address: at the 5th Mediterranean Seminar on Engineering and Technology Education, Athens, 11-15 September 2017. Finally, I would like to acknowledge, Professor Zenon J. Pudlowski, without whom none of these meetings would have been possible. Beginning with UICEE, and continuing with WIETE, he has been a truly international supporter of all that is best in Engineering and Technology Education. This has not only been through the networking and conference series but also through the publication of two world-class journals, Global Journal of Engineering Education and World Transactions Engineering and Technology Education. In recent years, Zenon has been ably assisted in the running of WIETE by Dorota Pudlowski, Managing Director, WIETE.

Staff, members and associates of the WIETE wish Professor Northwood a long, healthy and happy retirement (enriched by involvement in some of WIETE activities!).