Professor Julia Buckingham, Vice Chancellor and President of Brunel University, is an acknowledged world expert on the neuroendocrine mechanisms that control the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenocortical response to stress. Her work has elucidated the mechanisms by which factors such as drugs, gender, age and challenges to the host defence system influence these key control mechanisms. She both established and led one of the four UK centres jointly funded by BBSRC/MRC and the pharmaceutical industry that set up to revitalize research and training in in vivo physiology and pharmacology. She has been, and continues to be, a major contributor to major national committees that influence biomedical research funding and direction.