Our people

Sir Brian Heap has doctorates from the Universities of Nottingham and Cambridge in animal physiology, and has published on endocrine physiology, biotechnology, sustainable consumption and production, and science advice for policy makers. He was University Demonstrator at the University of Cambridge, staff member of the Institute of Animal Physiology, Babraham, Cambridge, Director of the Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research (Cambridge and Edinburgh), and Director of Research at the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Swindon. He was President of the Institute of Biology, UK Representative on the European Science Foundation, Strasbourg, UK Representative on the NATO Science Committee, member of the Scientific Advisory Panel for Emergency Responses (SAPER), Chief Scientist’s Office, Cabinet Office, and member of the Advisory Board of the Templeton Foundation. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1989, he became a member of Council, and Foreign Secretary and Vice-President from 1996 to 2001. In 1994 he was awarded CBE and in 2001 knighted for contributions to international science.

Sir Brian was President of the European Academies Science Advisory Council, Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham, and is Chief Scientific Advisor to the Malaysian Commonwealth Study Centre and the Cambridge Malaysian Education and Development Trust, and is a Trustee of the Cambridge China Development Trust. He was Master of St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, and is Honorary Fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge and formerly at Green Templeton College, Oxford. He was Editor of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Series B, Chair of the Advisory Panel on Sustainable Consumption and Production at the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, and Specialist Advisor to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Putting Science and Engineering at the Heart of Government Policy.

With the UK’s Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Department of Health’s Expert Group on Cloning, the EU President’s Advisory Group on Biotechnology, and the UK-China Forum he has been engaged in issues of population growth, environment and biotechnology. He is Senior Adviser of the Smart Villages Initiative in Africa, Asia and Latin America, International Adviser, Global Food Security, University of Cambridge, and previously project co-leader of Biosciences for Farming in Africa. He was scientific consultant for Merck, Sharp and Dohme, Johnson and Johnson, and Ligand Pharmaceuticals in the USA, and Principal Scientific Adviser for ZyGEM Co Ltd, New Zealand.

Dr Andy Harter CBE, DL, FREng, CEng, FIET, FBCS, CITP, FLCM, FRSA, read Mathematics and Computer Science at Fitzwilliam College. As a graduate student at Corpus Christi and the Computer Laboratory, he investigated designs for three-dimensional integrated circuits. His doctoral thesis was published by Cambridge University Press and is still available having been recently reprinted!

Since then he has been engaged in industrial research and development for communications systems, and was director of research and engineering of the AT&T Cambridge Laboratory. He has contributed extensively and significantly in the fields of distributed systems, ubiquitous and context aware computing, user-interface design and thin-client systems most notably VNC, a system that lets one person take over another person’s computer screen to help them fix problems. The software is now on over a billion devices, on more different kinds of computer than any other application and is even an official part of the internet. The software is also embedded in Intel Chips, Apple Desktops, Google Software, mobile phones and cars.

Andy is a Fellow of the Computer Laboratory involved with graduate student research programmes, and lectures to final year undergraduates. He is the founder and CEO of RealVNC, a highly successful Cambridge software company which in 2013 won its third Queen’s Awards for Enterprise in three years. He is a Chartered Engineer, a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2010, he received the Academy’s Silver Medal, and in 2013 the MacRobert Award, the most prestigious UK prize for engineering and commercialisation. In 2016 he was awarded the Faraday Medal, the highest honour of the Institution of Engineering and Technology and gave the 2018 Turing Lecture. He is a trustee of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, The Computer History Museum and Britten Sinfonia. He is a Chair of Cambridge Network and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was awarded a CBE in the 2017 Queen's Birthday Honours.  He is a Deputy Lieutenant of the County and was appointed by HM The Queen as the High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire for 2018-19.

At St Edmund's Andy has been a Tutor, Director of Studies in Computer Science, Senior Treasurer of the May Ball and Family officer. He is married to Lily and they are kept busy with their young family. Other interests include golf, rowing, gardening and music, particularly the piano and organ, for which Andy is a Fellow of the London College of Music. He also enjoys travel, and has ventured in a single-engined light aircraft to Iceland, Greenland, Northern Canada (to within a few hundred miles of the North Pole), North and South America (crossing the Andes, rounding Cape Horn and visiting the Falkland Islands).