Professor Mark Ormerod, Keele University's Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, has been presented with his OBE medal by King Charles for services to education and to sustainability.

Mark was honoured at an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, attended alongside his partner and parents and other award recipients including Sir Stephen Fry and several Olympian medallists.

He said: "King Charles was particularly interested to know more about the work I had done for more than 35 years linked to sustainability. He is someone who has championed environmental issues for most of his life, and we talked about the growth in renewable energy and low carbon technology, sustainable development and the need to keep increasing awareness and driving pro-environmental behaviour and environmental citizenship. It was clear he has a strong personal commitment to environmental protection and sustainability."

Mark has dedicated most of his working life to enhancing and promoting environmental sustainability and has an international profile for his leadership, advocacy and communication of sustainability, low carbon and clean technology issues. Responsible for helping lead the University’s activities in sustainability and low carbon energy since 2008, he has been instrumental in helping to embed sustainability in all aspects of Keele's operations – including education, research, external engagement and partnerships and the campus and community – and in raising its profile. In 2021, Keele was awarded Global Sustainability Institution of the Year at the International Green Gown Awards, building on its success at the UK and Ireland Green Gown Awards earlier that year, and in 2018 the University won the Outstanding Sustainability Leadership Team Award.

Mark has a strong commitment to the local region, with both his parents and large extended family all being born and brought up in Staffordshire. He has a long-standing passion for widening participation in higher and further education going back almost 40 years, and for equity, diversity and inclusion, and has worked extensively with under-represented communities during his career. This has included increasing awareness and engagement with science and sustainability issues, pro-environmental behaviour and environmental citizenship.

On receiving the award, he added: "While it’s not something I would have ever sought, I am very touched by the award and the messages I have received on the back of it. It was wonderful to have my parents and partner there with me when I received the award, and it's a memory we will all treasure.

"I've been very fortunate over my career to work with some hugely talented and outstanding colleagues, some phenomenal, inspiring researchers, lots of great research students, and some fantastic collaborators and external partners. They have provided me with the inspiration and motivation to always look forward and strive for change and for a more sustainable, as well as a more inclusive and kinder, society."

Mark has spent the last 32 years of his career working at Keele since joining as a lecturer in Physical Chemistry from the University of Cambridge in 1992 where he studied, researched and taught for nine

years, latterly as the University's Oppenheimer Fellow. In 1997 he was awarded a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Advanced Research Fellowship and promoted to Professor of Clean Technology and Inorganic Materials Chemistry at Keele in recognition of his research achievements.

His original research interests centred on more environmentally friendly chemical processes, sustainable materials chemistry and clean technologies, in particular heterogeneous catalysis and fuel cells, publishing more than 150 highly cited papers. Mark's research in sustainable materials and surface chemistry and clean chemical technologies, often working with industry, was internationally renowned and led to significant advances in the field.

More recently, Mark plays a key role in Keele's increasingly strong engagement with its partner colleges, including the new Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Institute of Technology, due to open in 2025, which Keele is the university partner of, and as a member of Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group Governing Body.

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