Professor John Loughhead CB OBE

He was Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) from 2016 to 2020. Before that, he was Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

Before joining DECC, John was Executive Director at the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). Prior to that, he was Corporate Vice-President of Technology and Intellectual Property at Alstom’s head office in Paris.

John’s professional career has been predominantly in industrial research and development for the electronics and electrical power industries, including advanced, high power industrial gas turbines, new energy conversion systems, spacecraft thermal management, electrical and materials development for electricity generation and transmission equipment, and electronic control systems. He has extensive international experience in both industry and academia.

John is a Chartered Engineer, graduating in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College, London, where he also spent 5 years in computational fluid dynamics research. He is Past-President of the UK’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of both the UK and Australian national Academies of Engineering, Professor of Engineering at Cardiff University and Fellow of the Queen Mary University of London.