The Association of Commonwealth Universities has appointed Imperial College London's Professor John Wood as its new Secretary General. Wood, currently senior international relations adviser at the college, will take up the post on 1 July. He succeeds Professor John Tarrant.

Wood graduated from the University of Sheffield in 1971 with a first class honours degree in metallurgy. He obtained a PhD at Cambridge, where he spent his early academic career before joining the Open University in 1978 and later went to Nottingham University where he became dean of engineering in 1998.

He was appointed Chief Executive of the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils in 2001and was appointed Principal of the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College in 2007 and senior international relations adviser in 2008.

Wood was selected by the European Commission to serve on the European Research Advisory Board in 2008 and was its first chairman. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 1999 and awarded a CBE for services to science in 2007.

The ACU is the oldest inter-university network in the world, with more than 500 members on six continents. It provides services to members, including research and policy analysis and a range of professional networks, as well as hosting higher education organisations and providing the secretariat for prestigious scholarship schemes.

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