Current as of 1/06/2023

Alec Broers is an engineer and educator who was born in India of British parents and grew up in Australia. He studied physics at Melbourne University and then engineering at Cambridge. In his PhD research at Cambridge, he discovered that the scanning electron microscope could be used to fabricate smaller electronic devices than could be made with conventional methods. This led him in 1965 to IBM’s research laboratories in New York where he fabricated the first man-made electronic devices with nanometre dimensions. He became an IBM Fellow and eventually held responsibility for Advanced Development at the company’s East Fishkill facility. He became a member of the Corporate Technical Committee, and after leaving IBM served on the company’s Science Advisory Committee.

He returned to Cambridge in 1984 and continued his research for more than ten years but progressively took on administrative responsibilities, first as Master of Churchill College and Head of the Department of Engineering, and then in 1996 as the University’s Vice-Chancellor. After retiring as Vice-Chancellor in 2003 he was appointed a Cross-Bench Life-Peer in the House of Lords and for four years chaired the Select Committee for Science and Technology and was President of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee. He retired from the House of Lords in 2021 and now lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island.

He has been a director of Lucas Industries, Vodafone, and several high-technology start-ups and is devoted to advancing the role of engineering in modern society. He was President of the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering and is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the National Academies of Engineering of the USA, China, and Australia. He is President of the Australian Music Foundation.

He enjoys winter sports and sails out of Jamestown, Rhode Island.