Professor Malcolm McCulloch

It is with huge sadness that we have to communicate the death of our wonderful colleague, Professor Malcolm McCulloch, last Friday.

Malcolm came to Oxford from Witwatersrand University in South Africa in 1993. He created the Energy and Power Research Group here and did some truly amazing and highly technical innovation work – he was one whose brain truly was the size of Jupiter. Alongside that, though, he had a very fine understanding of the need to engage people in the energy system transition and this is how we knew him at the Low Carbon Hub.

I first met him in 2008 when West Oxford Community Renewables was working with households as part of the NESTA Big Green Challenge. I was just stunned that an academic of his standing would take part in a community project as one of the households trying to reduce their carbon footprint. His interest in the ‘people’ part of the system never varied and was the main reason he brought Low Carbon Hub into the hugely influential innovation project, Project LEO, and then invited us to share the Holywell House building with his research group on Osney Mead. I think I am right in saying that was the first time the university had ever done such a thing.

Above all, and something we will miss forever, Malcolm believed in community energy and in us. He also never failed to offer a hug when it was needed. He will be sorely missed.