In a world of transitory electronic images, I think it is wonderful that we have reinstated the tradition of having our Heads of Departments' portraits painted.

Professor Richard Prager, Head of the Department of Engineering from 2018–2023

Professor Prager is currently the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser at the Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government. In this role he supports the science and engineering profession in the department, offers advice on specific initiatives and works with other CSAs across government to enable work to be informed by appropriate data and scientific principles.

He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering & Technology, and of Queens’ College Cambridge.

Professor Prager’s research has primarily focussed on the development of better non-invasive diagnostic medical imaging systems based on ultrasound.  He is currently working on computational models of the cerebellum, drawing on his earlier work on Kanerva’s sparse distributed memory.

He was Deputy Head of Department, responsible for undergraduate teaching, from 2006 to 2012 and Head of the Cambridge University School of Technology from 2014 to 2018.

He has an ongoing interest in developing web resources to help applicants prepare for university admissions interviews in engineering.

Professor Prager said, “In a world of transitory electronic images, I think it is wonderful that we have reinstated the tradition of having our Heads of Departments' portraits painted.”  He also talked about why the pictures in the board room are important: “A Head of Department is so dependent on colleagues to get things done, that a lot about the role, I think, is what you stand for, what the Department stands for.  

Over the years there has a been an unbroken dedication to solving important problems that matter for humankind, and on educating the next generation of engineers.  In particular our tradition of teaching engineering fundamentals that D B Welbourne says dates back to Alfred Ewing, Professor of Mechanism and Applied Mechanics and Head of Department 1890-1903.  In my mind, that is what the portraits in this room symbolise.”

The portrait was commissioned and produced by artist Rachel Constantine. Rachel trained in America at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts - the oldest art academy in the US, which was modeled after the Royal Academy in London and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She is a professional oil painter who does portrait commissions as well as her own narrative painting, still life and landscape/plein air painting.

She has been working in the field for over 20 years, exhibiting in museums and galleries across the United States. She says, “I had just moved to Cambridge and set up my UK studio only a few months prior to having been contacted about potentially painting Richard's portrait, which made it an even greater honour to have been selected. This now marks my first institutional portrait commission in the UK, and I could not be more proud that it is for Cambridge University, an entity that is imbued with such a long and storied history of Portraiture.”