Dr Julia King CBE FREng is chief executive of the Institute of Physics and chairman of the defence science advisory council of the Ministry of Defence.

On June 30, 2004, it was announced that Dr King would be the new Principal of the Engineering Faculty at Imperial College, taking up her post later in the year.

Dr King graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences. Her PhD, also from Cambridge, was in materials. She was a lecturer at the University of Nottingham from 1980 to 1987, then at Cambridge from 1987 to 1994, when she moved to Rolls Royce where she held a number of senior positions. She was appointed chief executive of the Institute of Physics in September 2002.

She received her CBE for services to materials engineering in the 1999 Queen's birthday honours.