Alec Broers, Baron Broers

Who is Alec Broers, Baron Broers?

Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, FRS, FREng is an Anglo-Australian electrical engineer.

Broers was born in Calcutta, India and educated at Geelong Grammar School and Melbourne University in Australia, and then University of Cambridge in England.

He then worked in the research and development laboratories of IBM in the United States for 19 years before returning to Cambridge in 1984 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is a pioneer of nanotechnology.

Broers subsequently became Master of Churchill College, Cambridge and Head of the Cambridge University Engineering Department. He was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, 1996–2003. In 1997 he was invited to deliver the MacMillan Memorial Lecture to the Institution of Engineers and Shipbuilders in Scotland. He chose the subject 'The Role and Education of the Creative Engineer'. He was knighted in 1998 and created a life peer in 2004, as Baron Broers, of Cambridge in the County of Cambridgeshire. Lord Broers was Chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords from 2004 to 2007 and was President of the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2001 to 2006.