Dame Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, was Chair of the Henry Royce Institute and is a crossbench member of the House of Lords. She is also Deputy Chair of the UK Committee on Climate Change, chairing its Adaptation Committee, Chair of The Carbon Trust, a Non-Executive Director of the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and a Council member of Innovate UK.

After 16 years as an academic researcher and University lecturer in materials at Cambridge and Nottingham Universities, Baroness Brown joined Rolls-Royce Plc in 1994, where she held several senior positions including Head of Materials, Managing Director of the Fan Systems business and Engineering Director of the Marine business. In 2002 she became CEO of the Institute of Physics, and in 2004 was appointed Principal of the Engineering Faculty at Imperial College London.