Professor John Wood CBE, FREng is the chair of the ATTRACT advisory board based at CERN in Geneva. He is visiting professor at Brunel University London, Liverpool Hope and Cranfield Universities. He has held several academic posts including the Open University, Nottingham University and Imperial College where he was head of the faculty of engineering.

He is a materials scientist by background and worked mainly on non-equilibrium structures in high performance materials. From 2001‐2007 he was appointed chief executive of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils in the UK.. His last post was as Secretary-General of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.

He was a non‐executive director of Bio‐Nano Consulting. He was a founder member of the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures and became chair in 2004. He was the first chair of the European Research Area Board in 200-11. His report “Riding the Wave” led to the creation of the Global Research Data Alliance where he was the first co-chair.

He was elected as a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1999 and made a Commander of the British Empire in 2007 for "services to science," In 2010 he was made an “Officer of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Among his honorary doctorates he holds one from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca in Romania and is an honorary citizen of that City