NASA head of science and World Cup-winning cricketer are among Surrey’s honorary graduates

They are joined by Neil Ashley, a Surrey graduate whose career took him from the National Coal Board to the boardrooms of some of the UK’s best-known construction and energy companies. 

Dr Nicky Fox is Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, leading a portfolio of around 100 missions that study Earth, the Sun, the planets and the wider universe. She came to Surrey to study an MSc in Telematics and Satellite Communications. 

After early roles at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Fox became chief scientist for heliophysics at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. There, she served as project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe – humanity’s first mission to “touch” the Sun and deputy project scientist for the Van Allen Probe, which explores Earth’s radiation belts. She joined NASA Headquarters in 2018 to lead the Heliophysics Division before she became the Associate Administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in 2023. 

Ebony Rainford-Brent MBE made history in 2001 as the first black woman to play cricket for England and was part of the England team that won the 2009 Women’s Cricket World Cup, the World Twenty20 and the Ashes within the same three months. She captained Surrey County Cricket Club’s Women’s team and became the club’s first Director of Women’s Cricket in 2015, a role she held until 2022. 

Since retiring from playing, Rainford-Brent has built a career as a broadcaster, appearing regularly on BBC Radio’s Test Match Special and Sky Sports, and founded the African-Caribbean Engagement (ACE) programmes, which she now chairs. ACE works with young people from Black communities across the UK. She was appointed MBE in 2021 for services to cricket and charity. 

Neil Ashley trained as a civil engineer, completing a BSc at Battersea College of Technology (the forerunner of the University of Surrey) in 1958 while working for the National Coal Board.  

Ashley worked on major projects with Costain and Consolidated Goldfields before joining Balfour Beatty, where he became Joint Managing Director in 1980 and led the company’s overseas operations in more than 50 countries. In 1989, he oversaw the acquisition of ARC’s construction business from Hanson plc, renamed it Amey plc, and served as Founder Chairman until his retirement in 2001, taking the company to a listing on the London Stock Exchange and into the FTSE 250 with a market capitalisation of £1.4 billion. He was also Founding Chairman of Energy Power Resources Ltd, at the time Europe’s largest private producer of non-fossil-fuel power, and a founding investor in Volvere plc, later serving as its Deputy Chairman.