Biography
Professor Lord (Alec) Broers FREng FRS Kt DL is the Chair of the Cambridge Graphene Centre Advisory Board. He is the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cambridge and was President of Royal Academy of Engineering from 2001 to 2006. Having been knighted in 1998 and made a Life Peer in 2004, Lord Broers has been Chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee (2004-2007) and is also chairman of the board of directors of the Diamond Light Source, which is the UK's largest new science facility to be commissioned in the last 30 years.
He was educated at Melbourne University and the University of Cambridge and worked in the Research & Development laboratories of IBM in the USA for nineteen years, becoming an IBM Fellow and ultimately holding responsibility for the development of chip technologies. His personal research concerned electron microscopes and the fabrication of nanoelectronic devices but his interests cover most aspects of the development of technology.
He returned to the UK in 1984 as Head of Electrical Engineering at Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College. He subsequently became Head of the Department of Engineering and Master of Churchill College before becoming Vice-Chancellor. He has served on the boards of several high technology start-up companies.
