Alec N. Broers is chairman of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee and past president (2001-2006) of the Royal Academy of Engineering. 

Lord Broers was also the Vice-chancellor (President) of Cambridge University from 1996 until 2003.  He is a pioneer of nanotechnology and the first person to use the scanning electron microscope for the fabrication of micro-miniature structures. 

Lord Broers was educated at Melbourne University and the University of Cambridge (Gonville and Caius College), and he then worked in the research and development laboratories of IBM in the U.S. for 19 years before returning to Cambridge in 1984 to become Professor of Electrical Engineering (1984-1996) and Fellow of Trinity College (1985-1990).  He subsequently became Master of Churchill College (1990-1996) and Head of the University Engineering Department (1993-1996). 

Lord Broers was knighted in 1998 and created a Life Peer in 2004.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society, an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and a foreign associate of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering.