Tue, 18 June, 2019
The Welding Institute's Annual Awards are to take place at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Hinxton (near Cambridge) on 2 July, 2019. The awards offer the opportunity for the Institute to recognise outstanding contributions to materials joining and welding technology.
This year will see former President of The Welding Institute, Steven Dearden FREng given an Honorary Fellowship of the Institute. The Honorary Fellowship is conferred in recognition of the recipient's contributions to, and standing in, the welding engineering community at an international level.
Steven Dearden joined the Royal Navy in September 1978 and, following initial training at sea, he completed a BSc in Mechanical Engineering at the Royal Naval Engineering College and, several years later, a MSc in electrical engineering.
Appointments at sea in several nuclear powered submarines were separated by spells in the MoD working in reactor design and development and 15 months in the Royal Navy’s Sea Training organisation with responsibility for training submarine engineering crews. He joined the Second Submarine Squadron as Squadron Deputy Chief Engineer in January 1996. Later that year he took up the post of Training Commander in HMS SULTAN, with responsibility for Mechanics’ Career training, the Nuclear School, and the move of the Department of Nuclear Science and Technology from Greenwich. In September 1999 he joined the Ship Support Agency as Head of the Steam Propulsion Systems Design Authority. On promotion to Captain in December 2001 he joined the MoD’s Nuclear Propulsion Project as the Head of Nuclear Propulsion Safety.
In September 2004 he was appointed to a 3 year tour in Washington DC, USA as the first UK Liaison Officer to the US Naval Nuclear Propulsion Programme. Returning to the UK in late 2007 on promotion to Commodore, he took up the post of Director Nuclear Propulsion, with responsibility for the UK’s operating and future submarine nuclear reactor plant. He was appointed in Command of HM Naval Base Devonport, Plymouth in August 2010.
He resigned from the Royal Navy in July 2012 to pursue a second career and took up the position as the Director of Engineering and Technology within Rolls-Royce Submarines. In January 2015 he was appointed as the Managing Director of the Rolls-Royce Submarines business.
Steven was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2016 and was President of The Welding Institute from 2016-2019.
Steven Dearden