Dr Julian Huppert is an academic and politician. He is Founding Director of the Intellectual Forum at Jesus College, Cambridge, a new interdisciplinary centre looking at a very wide range of important issues, mostly with public policy relevance. He is also a Visiting Professor at King’s College London, and an Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

His background is as a scientist, working on unusual structures of DNA and using genomics to identify anti-cancer drug targets. He was the Member of Parliament for Cambridge from 2010-15, representing the Liberal Democrats. He served on the Home Affairs Select Committee for five years, as well as serving on the Joint Committee on Human Rights and on the Board of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. He was the Lib Dem spokesperson for Home Affairs, Justice and Equalities, and on Transport, and was named 2012 ‘Internet Hero of the Year’ among other awards. 

He is now Deputy Chair of the NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG, a Director of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, and a member of the Home Office Biometrics and Forensics Ethics Group, looking at big data and facial recognition. He was Chair of the Panel of Independent Reviewers for DeepMind Health, pioneering a new approach to oversight and governance in technology companies.