Huddersfield University vice-chancellor Prof Bob Cryan has joined the engineering industry’s elite.

Prof Cryan has been elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), regarded as the most exclusive fellowship in the engineering profession.

Every year, the RAE creates 50 new fellows, who are nominated by their peers and then elected to join a body that currently includes innovators such as inventor Sir James Dyson and Apple chief designer Sir Jonathan Ive.

Prof Cryan, an electrical engineer who is the author of a substantial body of scientific articles on his areas of expertise, now adds the letters FREng to his sequence of degrees and distinctions, which includes two first class honours degrees and two doctorates.

The RAE was created in the 1970s to champion excellence in the profession and has the backing of the Duke of Edinburgh, who is its senior fellow and a keen supporter of innovation of engineering since his wartime career in the Royal Navy.

Take a look at the day Bob Cryan showed the Queen round the University below.

Other notable fellows have included jet engine developer Sir Frank Whittle, radar pioneer Sir George MacFarlane, bouncing bomb inventor Sir Barnes Wallis and Sir Maurice Wilkes, father of the UK computer industry.

Prof Cryan said: “Despite the many and highly-varied demands that come with being vice-chancellor of a go-ahead University, I have always maintained a parallel career as a researcher in my branch of engineering.

“To be chosen as fellow of the Royal Academy is a huge honour, but it is a tribute to the University of Huddersfield too, because it is here that I graduated in engineering and lectured in the subject while studying for my first doctorate.”