One of the annual highlights in the Academy calendar is the annual Sir Bernard Crossland lecture.
Now in its 24th year, the Sir Bernard Crossland Lecture series began in 2001 to honour our late colleague Sir Bernard Crossland, one of the UK and Ireland’s most respected engineers.
Sir Bernard Crossland was appointed to the chair of mechanical engineering at Queen’s University Belfast in 1959 by Sir Eric Ashby (later Lord Ashby), a reforming vice-chancellor who, like Crossland, was a passionate believer in the importance of technological education for society.
This year the lecture was delivered by Professor Orla Feely president of University College Dublin (UCD) and a Fellow of our Academy.
The topic chosen was “ENGINEERING THE FUTURE – Delivering through disruption”.
Professor Feely started by taking a trip through the amazing development of technology over the last 75 years from the development of the transistor, the transistor radio, Moore’s law, the PC, the World wide web, Google, the iPhone and AI.
All of these have made major changes to the way we live and work. We now live in a time of disruption with challenges from:
- Deglobalisation
- Digitalisation
- Decarbonisation
These three themes are not stand alone and overlap.
Without trying to predict changes over the next 75 years or even the next 75 months the future topics will include Engineering resilience. This is very topical considering the Euro-CASE conference 2026 planned for the 19th November 2026 in the International Conference centre (ICC) in Belfast will be hosted jointly by the Irish Academy of Engineering and the Royal Academy of Engineering and will discuss Engineering Resilience -Securing Europe’s critical infrastructure in a changing world.
In conclusion the lecture ended by highlighting “Engineering optimism” and how engineering can positively influence our shared future.
We take this opportunity to thank all our Academy Patrons and Fellows, whose voluntary efforts continue to provide thought leadership in times of great change.
Academy news bulletin 19 February 2026- Sir Bernard Crossland 2026 lecture