Sir Iain Gilmour Gray CBE FRSE FREng (born 22 March 1957) is a British engineer and academic, working as Professor and Director of Aerospace at Cranfield University since 2015. [1]
Gray worked for British Aerospace from graduation in 1979 until 2007, including as managing director of Airbus UK for the final three years, before transferring to government service as the first chief executive officer of the Technology Strategy Board (later Innovate UK"). [1] [2] Before he left for Cranfield, Gray was appointed Commander of the Order of British Empire in the 2014 New Year Honours "for services to Science, Technology and Innovation". [3]
Gray was knighted in the 2023 Birthday Honours "for services to the Aerospace Industry". [4]
Edward Richard Holmes, CBE, TD, VR, JP, known as Richard Holmes, was a British military historian. He was co-director of Cranfield University's Security and Resilience Group from 1989 to 2009 and became Professor of Military and Security Studies at Cranfield in 1995.
Julia Elizabeth King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, is a British engineer and a crossbench member of the House of Lords, where she chairs the Select Committee on Science and Technology. She is the incumbent chair of the Carbon Trust and the Henry Royce Institute, and was the vice-chancellor of Aston University from 2006 to 2016.
Sir Peter John Gregson, FREng was a British research engineer and Chair of the Henry Royce Institute. He was previously the Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University from 2013-2021 and President and Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast from 2004. Prior to that he was deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton from 2000-2004.
Field Marshal Richard Frederick Vincent, Baron Vincent of Coleshill, was a British Army officer. After serving with British Army of the Rhine he served with the Commonwealth Brigade in Malaysia during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. He commanded the 12th Light Air Defence Regiment in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, for which he was appointed a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, and later commanded the 19th Airportable Brigade. Although he never served as one of the individual service heads, he went on to be Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff in the late 1980s and then Chief of the Defence Staff in the aftermath of the Gulf War. He subsequently became Chair of the Military Committee of NATO in the mid-1990s.
Dame Deirdre Mary Hutton, is a British public servant, termed by the British media as "Queen of the Quangos" and "The great quango hopper". She was the chair of the UK's Civil Aviation Authority from 2009 to 2020.
Sir Steven George West is a British podiatrist, the vice-chancellor, president and chief executive officer of the University of the West of England since 2008. He holds a number of national and international advisory appointments in higher education, healthcare policy and regional government.
Dame Henrietta Miriam Ottoline Leyser is a British plant biologist and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge who is on secondment as CEO of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). From 2013 to 2020 she was the director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge.
Sir John Irving Bell is a Canadian-British immunologist and geneticist. From 2006 to 2011, he was President of the United Kingdom's Academy of Medical Sciences, and since 2002 he has held the Regius Chair of Medicine at the University of Oxford. He was since 2006 Chairman of the Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) but in 2020 became a normal member. Bell was selected to the Vaccine Taskforce sometime before 1 July 2020. Bell is also on the board of directors of the SOE quango Genomics England.
Air Marshal Sir Timothy Michael Anderson, is a retired senior Royal Air Force (RAF) officer. He served as the inaugural Director-General of the UK Military Aviation Authority (MAA) from 2010 to 2013. The MAA was established in response to the Haddon-Cave Review into the issues surrounding the loss of an RAF Nimrod over Afghanistan in September 2006. Earlier in his career, Anderson was a fast jet pilot, primarily flying the Tornado ground attack aircraft, and as Officer Commanding No. 14 Squadron led the United Kingdom's Tornado commitment to Operation Allied Force, the NATO air campaign over Kosovo in 1999, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He is currently Chairman of the UK Airspace Change Organising Group Steering Committee, overseeing a national infrastructure programme on behalf of the Secretary of State for Transport and the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
David Warren Arthur East is a British businessman and engineer. He is a former chief executive officer (CEO) of Rolls-Royce Holdings, a leading UK-based engine manufacturer, and previously held senior positions at ARM Holdings and Texas Instruments.
Air Marshal Sir Kevin James Leeson, is a retired Royal Air Force engineer officer, whose final appointment was as Chief of Materiel – Air at the Defence Equipment and Support organisation, concurrently holding the appointments of Air Member for Materiel on the Air Force Board and Chief Engineer (RAF), at which point he was the most senior non-aircrew officer in the service.
Professor John Leslie Stollery, was a British engineer and academic. He was Professor of Aerodynamics at Cranfield University. He served as president of the Royal Aeronautical Society from 1987 to 1988 and Editor-in-Chief of its The Aeronautical Journal from 1996 to 2006. He pioneered the 'Gun Tunnel' that is widely used in aerospace engineering.
Dame Helen Valerie Atkinson is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Cranfield University's School of Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing. She was previously Head of the University of Leicester's Department of Engineering and later Leicester's Graduate Dean. In 2010, she was designated one of the UKRC's Women of Outstanding Achievement and featured in the Women of Outstanding Achievement Photographic Exhibition. She was elected a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007, was a vice-president of the Academy from 2012 to 2014 and was elected to its Trustee Board in 2014.
Prof John Neil Loughhead is a British engineer and businessman. He is Industrial Professor of Clean Energy at University of Birmingham, Chair of the Redwheel-Turquoise ClimateTech Investment Committee, and Council member at the University of York. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, and of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was formerly Chief Scientific Adviser to Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and to Department of Energy & Climate Change. He was appointed OBE for services to Technology in 2011 and CB in 2018. In 2014, he was voted as one of the Top 500 Most Influential People in Britain by Debrett's and The Sunday Times.
Iain Douglas Baikie, is a Scottish physicist, inventor and company Director. He specialises in Material Science. Baikie supervises PhDs at Imperial College London and the University of St Andrews in thin-film electronics. In 2000 he founded a company- KP Technology in Wick. In 1997 Baikie was appointed Professor of Applied Physics with a Chair in Materials Science for his work on surface work function and the scanning Kelvin probe and is visiting professor at the Nanotechnology and Integrated Bio-Engineering Centre at the University of Ulster, Belfast. He is an honorary professor at the University of St Andrews.
In 2016 the Women's Engineering Society (WES), in collaboration with the Daily Telegraph, produced an inaugural list of the United Kingdom's Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering, which was published on National Women in Engineering Day on 23 June 2016. The event was so successful it became an annual celebration. The list was instigated by Dawn Bonfield MBE, then Chief Executive of the Women's Engineering Society. In 2019, WES ended its collaboration with the Daily Telegraph and started a new collaboration with The Guardian newspaper.
Catriona Wendy Campbell Laing is a British civil servant and diplomat who has been serving as United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres' Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) since 2023.
Professor David Roy Sandbach OBE FRSC is the Immediate Past-President of the Industry and Technology Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)... In addition, he sits on the board of the National Centre for Universities and Business (NCUB). He chairs Northern Accelerator, the research commercialisation programme for the North East England universities, Newcastle University, Durham University, Northumbria University Sunderland University, and Teesside University. He sits on the board of the Technology Services Association (TSA), the trade association for technology-enabled care. He is vice-Chair of the Sunderland Ageing Well Board. Sandbach is currently chairing the Dunhill Medical Trust funded national inquiry into the use of technology in housing to better care for our ageing population.
John Norman Newton is a British epidemiologist and public health expert. He is the Director of Health Improvement at Public Health England, and from 2020 coordinates the UK Government's COVID-19 testing programme.
General Sir Charles Roland Vincent Walker, is a senior British Army officer, who served as Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff from April 2021 until June 2024. He became Chief of the General Staff, the professional head of the British Army, on 15 June 2024.