Prof. John Wood

Professor John Wood CBE, FREng, is the Secretary General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU). He has doctorates from Cambridge and Sheffield Universities. He has held academic posts at several universities prior to Imperial College. He was Dean of Engineering at Nottingham and Principal of Engineering at Imperial and then Senior International Adviser before taking up his present post.

From 2001-2007 he was seconded to the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils as Chief Executive where he was responsible for the Rutherford-Appleton and Daresbury Laboratories in addition to shareholdings in ESRF, ILL and the Diamond Light Source.

He is a non-executive director of a number of companies including Bio-Nano Consulting and sits on the advisory board of the British Library. Currently he is on the board of the Joint Information Services Committee responsible for the UK academic computing network and chairs their Support for Research Committee.

He was founder member of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructure and became chair in 2004 where he was responsible for the first European Roadmap. He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1999 and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2007 for “services to science”. In 2008 he became the first chair of the European Research Area Board and in 2010 was made an “Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany”.