BT’s Professor Tim Whitley Scoops King’s Birthday Honours

The annual King’s Birthday Honours (2023) were published at the end of last week, which sadly only included one figure from the United Kingdom’s broadband and telecoms sector. Professor Tim Whitley, a distinguished engineer and BT’s Managing Director for Applied Research.

The honours’ system is technically designed to recognise people who have made achievements in public life and or committed themselves to serving and benefiting Britain, such as by helping to make the lives of other people or communities better. Proposed awards are chosen by the honours committee and their decisions go to the Prime Minister and then to the King, who awards the honour.

In this case, Professor Tim Whitley was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) title for “services to Communications Technologies and Scientific Policy” while in his position as BT’s MD of Applied Research.

Professor Tim Whitley, MD Research and Network Strategy at BT Group, said:

“I am delighted and humbled to accept this honour as a reflection of the way in which UK scientific research in collaboration with Industrial Applied research has helped shape the telecommunications technology that underpins so much of our modern connected world.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues at BT Group and the many academic researchers we work with for their tireless efforts, to ensure that as scientists and engineers we deliver the telecommunications technologies that not only underpin our nations’ economy but also play such a fundamental role in the fabric of people’s lives.”

Whitley is accountable for all of BT’s global research activities and has been involved in various projects in his 40-year career, such as advanced optical-fibre research, among other things.