N8 RESEARCH PARTNERSHIP - Key Persons

Job Titles:

• Vice - Chancellor of Lancaster University

Professor Andy Schofield is the Vice-Chancellor of Lancaster University. He took up the role in May 2020. Professor Schofield was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Head of the College of Engineering at the University of Birmingham from 2015 until 2020. Professor Schofield studied Natural Sciences at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge where he graduated in 1989 winning the Mott prize for physics and the Schuldham Plate. He stayed on in Cambridge where he undertook PhD research in the IRC for Superconductivity working on the theory of high temperature cuprate superconductors. He was elected a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College and obtained his PhD in 1993. In 1994 he moved to the USA where he worked at Rutgers, the stat university of New Jersey for two years, before returning to Cambridge. In 1997 Prof Schofield was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship to work on theories of non-Fermi liquids. He became Assistant Director of Studies at Gonville and Caius College on the Natural Sciences Tripos. In 1999 Andy moved to the University of Birmingham and was promoted to Professor of Theoretical Physics in 2002. In that year he won the Institute of Physics' Maxwell Medal and Prize for work on the emergent properties of correlated electrons. From 2008-2010, he was Director of Research for the College of Engineering and Physical Science. In 2010 he became Head of the Physics and Astronomy School before assuming the role of Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the College of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Birmingham in 2015.

Job Titles:

• Vice - Chancellor for Research & Impact

Anthony Hollander is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research & Impact and Professor of Stem Cell Biology at the University of Liverpool. He provides strategic leadership for the development of research policy and for ensuring impact of the University's research programmes in Liverpool and around the world. He is also responsible for commercialisation of research, for developing partnerships with companies and other external stakeholders and for the training of postgraduate research students. Anthony's research career has focussed on the development of stem cell therapies for treating diseases of cartilage. His spin-out company, Azellon Ltd, is developing a stem cell treatment for torn knee cartilage and he was previously part of a team that created the world's first tissue engineered airway. He is former President of the International Cartilage Repair Society and is Chair of Utrecht University's International Scientific and Societal Advisory Board for Life Sciences.

Job Titles:

• Professor
• Vice - Chancellor and President of the University of York

Professor Charlie Jeffery took up his role as Vice-Chancellor and President of the University of York in September 2019. Prior to his current appointment he was Senior Vice-Principal at the University of Edinburgh from 2014 - 2019, and previously Vice-Principal (Public Policy) and Professor of Politics at Edinburgh since 2004. Professor Jeffery's portfolio at Edinburgh spanned the development of strategy and policy, including roles in strategic and financial planning, student experience, and internal engagement and communications. He also had overarching responsibility in external relations, including economic development, widening participation, public affairs and international strategy. His key achievements include driving interdisciplinary collaborations; including positioning Edinburgh's expertise in data science to underpin a regional economic vision. He also played a pivotal role in the development of the £1.3bn Edinburgh City Deal that included a £237m Government investment in Edinburgh's Data Science programme.

Job Titles:

• Professor

Professor Colette Fagan, FAcSS, is the University's Vice-President for Research. She is responsible for leading and implementing the University's research strategy and doctoral training. Previously Colette was the Deputy Dean and Vice-Dean for Research for the Faculty of Humanities (2010-2017). She was elected to Senate in 2008 and in 2009 joined the University Board of Governors as a senate-elected representative, with her term of office renewed twice by election (2009-2018). Her other board experience includes primary school governing body chair and parent governor (2008-11). Colette's research focus is on employment, working conditions and job quality; with particular interests in gender relations and inequalities in the workplace and in family life, working-time and time-use, and international comparative analysis. Her research has been supported by major national and international funders, including the UK's ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) and the European Union's research framework programes. Her record of knowledge exchange and impact formed one of the University's REF2014 impact cases for sociology. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and has held visiting academic appointments at the Wissenshaftzentrum (WZB) Berlin; RMIT Australia; and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. Through her research she has been appointed to several high-level advisory bodies. She was a working group member and co-author of the British Academy's 2016 report Crossing Paths: Interdisciplinary institutions, careers, education and applications. She is the UK national academic expert in the European Commission's Expert Network on Employment and Gender Equality (SAAGE) and one of the two academics appointed to Eurofound's Advisory Board on Working Conditions and Sustainable Work (the European Commission's tri-partite research and policy agency). Her previous advisory appointments to inform policy through research include the European Commission, the European Parliament, the United Nations' International Labour Office and the OECD; plus reports for a range of government agencies, trade unions and employers' associations in the EU, Australia, Japan and South Korea.

Job Titles:

• Professor of Chemistry at the University of Durham

Professor Colin Bain is Vice-Provost (Research) and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Durham. He graduated in Natural Sciences from Cambridge in 1983 before gaining a PhD at Harvard in 1988. Following a Royal Society Research Fellowship back at Cambridge, he was a UL at Oxford University until his appointment to a Chair in Durham in 2005. He has received the Harrison (1992), Corday-Morgan (2000) and Tilden (2008) prizes of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Lectureship Award of the Japanese Chemical Society (2005), and has delivered the McBain Lecture at the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, India (2005) and the Craig Lectures at the Australian National University, Canberra (2008). He is a founding editor of the journal Soft Matter and sits on the editorial advisory boards of Langmuir and ChemPhysChem. He is acknowledged as a leading expert in surface chemistry and is a regular member of committees of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He spent five years managing the Oxford Science Park and retains an interest in technology transfer as a Scientific Advisor to the venture capital firm, Oxford Capital Partners.

Job Titles:

• Director
• Artist

Annette joined the N8 Research Partnership as Director in January 2018. Previously working for the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Annette brings a tremendous amount of knowledge and experience from a career that spans numerous senior positions. She will probably be best known to the research and business communities in the North from her most recent role as Head of Healthcare Technologies, where she has had particularly significant success in galvanising multidisciplinary research collaborations between researchers and between funders. She also brings to the N8 strong experience of organisational change, having played a prominent role in the successful transfer of EPSRC's grants services to a shared service centre, including the implementation of a new IT system. Other roles in EPSRC have included Head of Mathematical Sciences, Complexity Science and Engineering. Annette is also an artist and student at the Royal School of Needlework, graduating last year from the Certificate in Technical Hand Embroidery and is now studying for the Diploma. Her work has been exhibited by the Royal School and in galleries in the UK. She feels that her love for both the arts and the sciences are one of the reasons that she is so passionate about multidisciplinary research and bringing people together to address real world challenges.

Job Titles:

• Senior Research Partnership Manager

Nick's role is to manage the portfolio of projects that the N8 are facilitating from inception through to their implementation at one of the N8 Universities. Prior to this role Nick worked as a Research Manager with a medical research charity, helping to shape the policy on translational research, and as a Discovery Manager at Renovo, a biotechnology spin-out from the University of Manchester. Nick has a degree in Applied Chemistry and PhD from the University of Nottingham, as well as two years' experience as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. Nick's interests include photography and learning to bake.

Job Titles:

• Durham University As Vice - Chancellor

Professor Karen O'Brien joined Durham University as Vice-Chancellor and Warden in January 2022, from the University of Oxford. For the previous five years, Professor O'Brien led the Humanities Division at Oxford. As a member of the University Council, she was jointly responsible for the financial oversight, research strategy and equalities and access priorities of the University. During the first phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, she successfully oversaw the University's preparations for operating safely during the ensuing academic year. Prior to joining Oxford, she was Vice-Principal (Education) at King's College London. She has held a number of national and international leadership roles, including serving on the international jury of the Institut Universitaire de France and as chair of the Russell Group Pro-Vice-Chancellors for Teaching and Learning. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Honorary Fellow of Peterhouse, University of Cambridge and of St Cross College, University of Oxford, she has published widely on the literature and intellectual history of the Enlightenment. She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4, BBC World Service and other media networks. She is a Trustee of Chawton House, and was until recently a member of the editorial board of The Conversation.

Job Titles:

• Member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Life Sciences Sectional Committee
• Professor

Professor Louise Heathwaite is a hydrochemist and Professor of Land and Water Science in the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Birthday honours 2018 for services to scientific research and scientific advice to the government. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in recognition of the distinguished contribution she has made to catchment science and to science-policy engagement. Louise's long-term contribution to the discipline of hydrology led to her election in 2004 as Vice-President of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences and, in 2017, President of the Freshwater Biological Association. Prior to this, in 2004, Louise founded and was first Director of the Centre for Sustainable Water Management in Lancaster University. Louise has significant experience of both research council and government environments. Between 2012-17, she was Chief Scientific Adviser to the Scottish Government on Rural Affairs, Food and Environment. She has also served on Defra's Science Advisory Council 2011-17 and held an ex officio position on the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) from 2012-17 and in March 2018, Louise was appointed to the UKRI-NERC Council. Louise is also a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Life Sciences Sectional Committee; a member of the advisory group for the UKRI Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund programme on Transforming Food Production, Chair of the Research Council Valuing Nature Programme Advisory Group, a member of the Science Advisory Group UK Environment Agency, and a member of the Task Team of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Global Partnership on Nutrient Management (GPNM).

Job Titles:

• Administration Officer
• Assistant
• Executive

Lucy is Executive Administration Officer - working with the N8 team, N8 Board and Strategic Executive Group, and also working as Personal Assistant to N8 Director Dr Annette Bramley. Lucy has worked as assistant to a senior executive for the past eight years. Her previous roles include managing a loyalty scheme within a marketing company, before moving into a global real estate corporation supporting a group of senior directors, and acting as spokesperson for the executive assistants in the whole of the northern region.

Job Titles:

• Vice - Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Newcastle University

Matthew Grenby is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Newcastle University and holds a chair in Eighteenth-Century Studies in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics. He leads on research and innovation, across the three Faculties at Newcastle as well as at the campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. He is responsible for implementing and developing the University's Research Strategy, developing fruitful knowledge exchange relationships with regional, national and international partners, encouraging research-led teaching, and ensuring that researchers across the University are supported to produce world-leading and impactful research. Before being appointed as Interim PVC in 2022 he was Dean of Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and before that was the founding Director of the Newcastle University Humanities Research Institute. His own research has focussed on eighteenth-century Britain, looking particularly at children's literature and history, political fiction, and electoral participation and culture. He has a particular interest in the experiences of children and young people, both historical and contemporary, including their engagement with books and reading, arts and culture generally, and more recently, heritage sites and organisations.

Job Titles:

• Professor
• Vice - Chancellor for Research at the University of York

Professor Matthias Ruth is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at the University of York. Most previously, he served as Vice-President (Research and Innovation) and Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Alberta, Canada. Prior to that, he was Director of the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, USA. Professor Ruth holds a master's degree in economics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and a PhD in geography from the University of Illinois, where he also received training in engineering and biology. He began his academic career in the Department of Geography at Boston University in 1992 and moved to the University of Maryland in 2000, where he was Professor and Director of the Environmental Policy Program in the School of Public Policy and Director of the University's program in Engineering and Public Policy. Professor Ruth served in roles of increasing responsibility at the University of Maryland, including the Roy F. Weston Chair in Natural Economics and policy advisor on sustainability to the Chancellor of the 12 universities and colleges that constitute the state-wide system of Maryland. In 2012, Prof Ruth joined Northeastern University in Boston as professor in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs as well as the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. He has published 20 books, plus more than 150 papers and book chapters. His interdisciplinary research focuses on dynamic modelling of natural resource use, industrial and infrastructure systems analysis, and environmental economics and policy. His theoretical work draws on concepts from engineering, economics and ecology, while his applied research uses methods of non-linear dynamic modelling as well as adaptive and anticipatory management. He is a founding editor-in-chief of the journal Urban Climate, a founder of Ecological Economics, and serves on the boards of numerous journals and scientific organisations.

Job Titles:

• Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research & Innovation

Professor Nick Plant is the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research & Innovation, Dean of Research Quality and Impact, and Professor in Systems Biology at the University of Leeds. Before joining the University of Leeds, Nick was an Associate Professor in Systems Biology at the University of Surrey, where he led the REF2014 preparations for the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. He is a science graduate of the University of Nottingham, where he gained both his undergraduate [BSC (Hons) Biochemistry and Genetics] and postgraduate [PhD Toxicology] degrees. He was enrolled as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2016. He has served full terms on the Committee on Toxicity of chemicals in food, consumer products and the environment (2007-2017) and the MHRA Pharmacovigilance expert advisory group (2011-2017), and is a member of the JECFA college of experts. He has a long-standing relationship with the NC3Rs, having served on the Grant Assessment and Fellowship panels (2013-2017) and 2018 3Rs Prize Panel; he will join the NC3Rs Board in January 2021. His area of research explores how the body coordinates its response to chemical challenge, with a particular interest in using computational approaches to predict the ultimate impact of chemical exposure on human health. He has been involved in a number of industry-academia partnerships to investigate, and model, these response networks, contributing towards our understanding of basic biological mechanisms as well as the longer term goal of personalised medicine and health advice.

Job Titles:

• Research Partnership Manager

Stephen's role is to manage the portfolio of projects that the N8 are facilitating from inception through to their implementation at one of the N8 Universities. Before joining the N8 Research Partnership, Stephen worked as a Research Development Manager at the University of Salford, supporting research grant applications across three Schools (Built Environment, Computing, Science & Engineering and Environment and Life Sciences) and as a Senior Business Development Executive at Imperial Consultants, a subsidiary of Imperial College London, developing and managing academic consultancy projects. Prior to this, he worked as a project manager for a major engineering consultancy firm and as a policy advisor for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Stephen has a BSc in Government and a MSc in Political Theory, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PGCert in Higher Education Administration, Management and Leadership. Stephen's interests include running, photography and cinema.

Job Titles:

• Professor
• Trustee of Royal Botanic Gardens

Professor Sue Hartley took up the role of Vice-President for Research at the University of Sheffield in January 2020. She joined Sheffield from the University of York where she was Director of the York Environmental Sustainability Institute, a pioneering interdisciplinary research partnership generating solutions to global environmental challenges. She was also the University of York's Research Champion for Environmental Sustainability and Resilience, driving a range of interdisciplinary research programmes with colleagues from multiple disciplines and external partners. Sue is also a trustee of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and a board member of Natural England, the UK government's statutory adviser for the natural environment in England. Her research interests include understanding the interactions between organisms exploiting plants, how those interactions are mediated by plant defences, particularly silicon, and how a better understanding of those processes can improve both the sustainability of agriculture and agri-environmental policy. As Vice-President for Research, she will lead the University's research activity, including research excellence, the flagship institutes, REF preparations, grant activity and impact. She will work closely with Professor Dave Petley who will provide strategic leadership to the University's innovation, knowledge exchange, Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) and regional engagement agendas in his role as Vice-President for Innovation.