Prof Ocone obtained her first degree in Chemical Engineering from the Università di Napoli, Italy and her MA and PhD in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, USA. She holds the Chair of Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University (HWU) since 1995. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Institution of Chemical Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. In 2007 she was conferred the title of Cavaliere (Knight) of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity from the Italian Republic. In The Queen’s 2019 New Year Honours she was appointed OBE for services to engineering.
At HWU, she is the Head of the Multiphase Multiscale Engineering Modelling (MMEM) research group. Raffaella has worked in a number of highly recognised international Institutions such as the Università di Napoli (Italy); Claude Bérnard Université, Lyon (France); Louisiana State University (USA); Princeton University (USA). Recently she was the “Caroline Herschel Visiting Professor” at RHUR Universität, Bochum, Germany (July-November 2017) and the recipient of a Visiting Research Fellowship from the Institute for Advanced Studies, Università di Bologna, Italy (March-April 2018).
Raffaella’s main area of research is in the field of modelling complex (multi-phase) reactive systems. She is the EPSRC Established Career Fellow in Particle Technology. Specific research activities are in areas of the hydrodynamics of granular and particle laden flows; the kinetics of multi-component mixtures; the rheology of complex materials. Raffaella’s research is truly inter- and multi-disciplinary and carried out in collaboration with colleagues in the UK and abroad in disciplines such as Mathematics, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering and Medicine.