After an academic career at Cambridge University, Julia King held senior business and engineering posts at Rolls-Royce for ten years. She returned to academia as Principal of the Engineering Faculty at Imperial College, London, becoming Vice-Chancellor of Aston University in December 2006.
Julia currently advises Government as a non-executive Director of the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills, a member of the Committee on Climate Change and the UK’s Low Carbon Business Ambassador, and previously through the ‘King Review’ (2008) on reducing vehicle emissions, and as a member of the ‘Browne Review’ (2011) on university funding. She was an inaugural member of the Governing Board of the European Institute of Innovation & Technology.

She is a non-executive Director of Angel Trains and of the Green Investment Bank, a member of the UK Airports Commission and of the UAE-UK Business Council, sits on the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, and is a member of the Board of Universities UK, chairing its Employability, Business and Industry Network.

Julia’s work has been recognised by the Grunfeld, Bengough, Kelvin, John Collier and Lunar Society medals, and the President’s Prize of the Engineering Professors’ Council. She is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was awarded a CBE in 1999 and a DBE in 2012.