Professor Dame Julia M Goodfellow DBE, CBE, FMedSci, FInstP became the 5th Vice-Chancellor of the University in September 2007.

Julia had previously been the Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council where she was responsible for government funding for the biosciences in universities and in seven sponsored research institutes. She had been a member of the BBSRC council prior to this. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Biology. She was awarded a CBE in 2001 for services to biophysics and DBE in 2010.

Her career began with an undergraduate degree in physics at the University of Bristol and she completed a PhD in biophysics at the Open University Research Unit in Oxford. After postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in California, she moved to the Department of Crystallography at Birkbeck, University of London.

Her scientific studies pioneered the use of computational methods to study the structures of large biologically important molecules and used this to probe their function and dynamics. She became Professor of Biomolecular Sciences in 1995 and Head of the Department of Crystallography in 1996 at Birkbeck, University of London. She was appointed Vice-Master (deputy head) in 1998.

She is also the Equality and Diversity champion for Sex (Gender) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT).