Page 44 - Eclipse - RVC Alumni Magazine - Autumn 2020

MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Alan Wilson elected Fellow of the Royal Society
Alan Wilson, Professor of Locomotor Biomechanics and Head of the RVC’s Structure and Motion Lab, has joined an exclusive group of vets to become a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The Royal Society is made up of eminent scientists, engineers and technologists who are elected for life through a peer review process based on a substantial contribution to science and the improvement of natural knowledge.
Professor Wilson’s work has taken
him across the globe to examine the performance of sport animals during competition, wild African animals during hunting, and the energetics of bird flight.
His work is primarily focused on how
the musculoskeletal system of athletic animals is configured and used to deliver economical and high-performance locomotion, and the biomechanical factors that limit locomotor performance.
His commitment to research also led him to build an aeroplane in his garden, obtain a pilot’s license, and spend a decade developing his own tracking collars so that he was able to fly across Botswana and monitor cheetahs in the wild.
His election to the world's oldest independent scientific academy reflects the pioneering results of his work and is testament to the significant number of papers he has published over the years. His research has been featured in a number of BBC documentaries, including Horizon’s The Secret Life of the Cat
and the Big Cats series, both of which used his tracking and movement sensing
collars to understand hunting and ranging behaviour to determine what makes the cheetah such an incredible predator. Professor Wilson began his veterinary career as an undergraduate at the University of Glasgow, before undertaking a PhD in the Anatomy Department at the University of Bristol, where he studied
the mechanical basis of tendon injury. He joined the RVC in 1996.
Commenting on his Fellowship, Alan
said: “This is a very great honour for me. Research is a team effort and I thank each and every member of my research team over the years for their contribution.”
Stuart Reid said: “I am delighted for Alan, for his discipline and for the profession. Having been a classmate of Alan’s in our student days, now as a colleague, it is a particular pleasure to see him recognised for his significant contributions.”
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Professor Alan Wilson poses with cheetahs and the Structure and Motion Lab research aircraft while filming a segment for Big Cats with the BBC. All photos ©BBC/Stuart Dunn