Professor John Neil Loughhead Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire FREng Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers FIET is a British businessman and Chief Scientific Adviser to Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Education
He attended Bemrose Grammar School in Derby, a boys" grammar school.
John Loughhead graduated in Mechanical Engineering from, where he also spent five years in computational fluid dynamics research. He is Honorary Professor of Cardiff University, Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary University of London, Fellow of both the United Kingdom and Australian national Academies of Engineering, and a Freeman of the City of London.
Career
He is also Executive Director of the United Kingdom Energy Research Centre and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. He was awarded an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for services to Technology in 2011. In 2014, he was voted as one of the Top 500 Most Influential People in Britain by Debrett"s and The Sunday Times.
John Loughhead was Corporate Vice-President of Technology and Intellectual Property at Alstom.
He joined the United Kingdom Energy Research Centre in 2004 as Executive Director. He was also Company-Chair of the Implementation Panel of the European Commission Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology Platform, which produced the future plan for European fuel cell commercialisation, and is currently Company-Chair of the Implementation Committee of the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy.
In 2013, John Loughhead was appointed as the United Kingdom’s Focal Point contact for China in the area of energy and renewables until January 2015. Later in 2013 he was appointed chair of an independent science board overseeing a transport-European fracking research project
In October 2014, John Loughhead was appointed Chief Scientific Adviser to the United Kingdom Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), where he works to ensure that the Department’s policies and operations, and its contributions to wider Government issues, are underpinned by the best science and engineering advice available.
Membership
He is currently the United Kingdom member of the European Energy Research Alliance, a member of the European Advisory Group on Energy, and Advisor to the European Commission Directorate-General Research, Assessor for the Technology Strategy Board, Non-Executive Director of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) Research & Development Board, and a member of the United Kingdom’s Energy Research Partnership. He was previously a member of Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Council and Past-President of the United Kingdom"s Institution of Engineering and Technology.