Professor Patricia Thornley FREng
Biography
Professor Patricia Thornley was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor for the Department for Transport in February 2026.
Patricia is a research leader in sustainable fuels. She has led the national research programme in bioenergy (UKRI Supergen Bioenergy Hub) for 14 years. Previous work includes leading on fuel scale up in the Clean Maritime Decarbonisation Hub and environmental assessment in the NewJet aviation project. Patricia continues to lead an EPSRC & BBSRC funded centre for doctoral training on negative emission technologies to remove greenhouse gases from atmosphere across Aston, Nottingham, Warwick and Queen’s University, Belfast.
Patricia has been director of Aston University’s Energy and Bioproducts Research Institute from 2018 to 2025 and associate dean for research for its College of Engineering and Physical Sciences for 3 years. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2021 based on her work on engineering evaluation of the environmental, economic and social consequences of low carbon implementation pathways and policy advice.
She received her B.Sc. in Physics from Durham University in 1993 and PhD from the University of Ulster in 1996. She spent 7 years in the commercial sector, working as a combustion engineer and lender’s engineer before moving to academia via the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change research at the University of Manchester’s school of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, where she became professor in 2015. She has led £36 million EPSRC and BBSRC projects as principal investigator and pioneered work on integrated assessment and sustainability analysis of fuel and energy systems, including appointments to advisory groups, based on experience across Europe, the Americas, sub Saharan Africa and Asia, for the:
- DfT
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
- Climate Change Committee
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
- Royal Academy of Engineering
- British Council
- Royal Society
- UKRI
DfT Chief Scientific Adviser
The Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA):
- provides advice and independent challenge to ministers and senior officials
- ensures that science and engineering evidence and advice is robust, relevant and high quality
- ensures there are mechanisms for science and engineering to underpin policymaking and the delivery of services and operations
- assures the operation of the principles of scientific advice to government to all external scientific advice
- is responsible for the ‘DfT science, innovation and technology plan’
- works with CSAs in other departments to share good practice across government and identify and resolve cross-departmental science issues
- is the Head of the Science and Engineering Profession (HoSEP) at Department for Transport