Professor Sarah Sharples, currently seconded to the Department for Transport as its Chief Scientific Adviser, delivered the prestigious Queen’s Lecture in Berlin on Monday.

Drawing on her expertise as Professor of Human Factors, Professor Sharples spoke about designing and delivering a human-centred future for transport policy in areas such as self-driving vehicles, decarbonisation and whole systems thinking, as well as emphasising the value of embedding diversity and inclusion in our future transport systems.

The Queen’s Lectures were founded by the late Queen Elizabeth II as a gift to the City of Berlin on the occasion of her state visit in 1965, where each year a renowned British scientist delivers a lecture on their area of expertise. The Queen’s Lecture is a collaboration between Technical University Berlin, the British Embassy in Germany, and the British Council Germany.

A recording of the lecture is available on YouTube.

An interview with Professor Sharples about the themes of the Queen’s Lecture is also available on the TU Berlin website: Interview Professor Sarah Sharples

Over the past 27 years Professor Sharples has engaged with a range of technologies to understand the interaction between people, technologies, and their settings. Her work has been based in transport, healthcare, and manufacturing, and many of her projects have involved developing and implementing methods for capturing results in real world and laboratory settings.

Professor Sharples was the President of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors from 2015-2016. From 2018-2021 she was Pro-Vice Chancellor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and People at the University of Nottingham.