Alastair Balls

Alastair Gordon Balls CB, DL (born 18 March 1944) is a former senior economic adviser to the UK HM Treasury and director, Northern Region, Departments of Environment and Transport, and is Chairman of the International Centre for Life.

Serving (from 1998 to 2003) as a member of the board of the Independent Television Commission, and as vice-chairman of the Council of the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne,[3] Alastair Balls had also been appointed (2002) a non-executive director of Northumbrian Water.

In January 2006, Alastair Balls took up the post as Chairman of the Northern Rock Foundation[4] and in December of that year was also appointed to the board of the Higher Education Funding Council for England.

[7] In 1997, Alastair Balls was appointed Chief executive of the founding organisation of the International Centre for Life, the £70 million independent experimental science village, developed in conjunction with Newcastle University and University of Durham, majoring in genetics and life sciences that has been in the forefront of developments in embryonic human stem cell cultivation and transfer.

[2][8] In the New Year Honours of 1994, Alastair Balls was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) for "services to regeneration in the north east of England.