Mark Spearing is Chair of the Education Committee and member of the Estates Committee.
He is a Professor of Engineering Materials and Vice-President for Research and Enterprise at the University of Southampton. After leaving Sherborne (h) in 1982 he studied Engineering at Cambridge and completed a Ph.D at the same University in 1989. He then undertook postdoctoral research at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Mark worked for BP in Cleveland Ohio from 1992-1994. He then moved to the Aeronautics and Astronautics department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, leaving as a Full Professor in 2004 to join Southampton. His research and teaching focuses on the use of advanced materials, particularly composites, in engineering systems. He is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
Mark is married with three children, two of whom attend schools in the Winchester area and the eldest is in her first year at university.
