Nottingham expert named President of the Royal Institute of Navigation

A longstanding Fellow of the RIN, Professor Moore has previously been its Vice President on three occasions. As President, Professor Moore will work closely with the Director to run the Institute and chair the elected Council; the executive, decision-making body on the RIN and trustees of the charitable status of the RIN.

Professor Moore took up his new post on Tuesday 10 July, following his election during the Annual General Meeting, held at the Royal Geographical Society in London.

“Great and experienced navigators have led our Institute I am feeling rather humble to be considered worthy to stand alongside my predecessors,” said Professor Moore. “This is a time for significant change for the RIN as we transition from being solely a learned society to now also take on the status of a professional body.

“We now offer routes to professional registration for engineers working in the fields of navigation technology. With that in mind, it is also important for us to acknowledge the present gender and diversity imbalance in our membership and leadership and I hope to bring in measures that address these issues head on. It is also time to introduce new activities and ventures to encourage and empower younger RIN members as students and professionals.”

Professor Moore points out the key challenge that the Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) community faces today is tackling the robustness and resilience of technologies and methods used for PNT. The signals relied on for satellite-based positioning and navigation are of very low power and are subject to either accidental or intentional interference.

This was clearly identified in two recent studies, the London Economics report on the Economic Impact on the UK of a Disruption to GNSS, and then the subsequent Blackett Review on Satellite-derived Time and Position: A Study of Critical Dependencies. The RIN jointly sponsored the London Economics study, and Professor Moore sat on the Government Office of Science Expert Panel that authored the Blackett Review.

The 10 recommendations of the Blackett Review are now being implemented across Government, under the leadership of the Blackett Review Implementation Group. This group has established a technical advisory group, known as the PNT Technical Group, for which Professor Moore is the sole academic representative.

“The RIN is taking a leading role in addressing the vulnerabilities we have identified in PNT, and I am involved both as an academic and as the President of the RIN,” adds Professor Moore.

Professor Moore has decades of research experience in surveying, positioning and navigation technologies and is an advisor to European and UK government agencies and industry.

He oversees the NGI’s research and teaching. He is also the founding Director of GRACE, the GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence, which is NGI’s business engagement unit.

In addition, Professor Moore leads the University of Nottingham Transport Technology Research Priority Area and has supervised numerous research projects and over 30 PhD students.

Among his many accolades, Professor Moore was given the prestigious Johannes Kepler Award 2017 by the US Institute of Navigation. The award recognised Professor Moore’s outstanding contribution to the development of satellite navigation and is the highest honour bestowed by the ION’s Satellite Division. He was only the second Briton to ever receive this award.

In 2013, Professor Moore was awarded the RIN’s Harold Spencer-Jones Gold Medal, its highest honour, in recognition of his outstanding contribution to navigation through a sustained career devoted to teaching and research.

Additionally, Professor Moore has authored, or been a leading contributor to, more than 200 technical research papers published in top journals and is a regular contributor to major GNSS conferences and both national and international professional and scientific bodies.