Miles Padgett is a Royal Society Research Professor at the Univeristy of Glasgow and a member of the UK Committee on Research Integrity (UK CORI).

He was a member of the REF physics sub panel in 2014 and chair in 2021. During his term as Vice-Principal for Research at the University of Glasgow (2014-2019) he and his colleagues championed how an improved research culture was not an alternative to excellence but rather what would allow more of us to excel, in this role he also oversaw the University submission to the REF exercise itself.

Steven Hill is Director of Research at Research England. Steven was formerly Head of Research Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and leads on all aspects of research policy and funding.

Steven is responsible for research funding, including quality-related funding (QR), general capital funding and the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF). He also leads Research England’s research assessment and policy work, and is the chair of the steering group for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF). Policy responsibilities include research integrity, public engagement and open research, and Steven contributes to debates and discussions at home and overseas on the enhancement and assessment of research impact. His team also includes Research England’s analysis function.

About Steven:
Steven has a degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD in Plant Biology from the University of Edinburgh. After a number of research posts, he was appointed to a lectureship in plant science at the University of Oxford, where he taught and researched for eight years. He then shifted career tracks into the world of policymaking, with two roles at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, focusing on bringing science and research into policymaking. Subsequently, he was appointed Head of the Strategy Unit at Research Councils UK, and then took up the post of Head of Research Policy at HEFCE in 2013.

Dr Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd works in research policy and culture at Loughborough University. She chairs the International Network Of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group and is Vice Chair of the Coalition on Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA). In 2022, she co-authored the UKRI-commissioned report, ‘Harnessing the Metric Tide: Indicators, Infrastructures & Priorities for UK Research Assessment’. Lizzie champions the ARMA Research Evaluation SIG, founded the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum and The Bibliomagician Blog and was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management and Leadership.

Tim was appointed to the role of Provost & Senior Vice-President in April 2022, and is responsible for leading the faculties and institutes to deliver the University’s goals.  Over the last nine months he has been active in leading a change programme in the R&I portfolio as the University recruits a new Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Prior to his move to Surrey, Tim had a number of leadership roles at The University of Queensland (UQ), including Deputy Provost. He is recognised for his research on human rights protection and foreign policy-making in a changing world order. He has written and co-edited fourteen books, including Terror in our Time (2012), The Globalization of International Society (2017), and The Rise of the International (2023 in press). He is an elected Fellow of the Academic of Social Sciences, Australia and holds an Emeritus Professorship at The University of Queensland.

Dr Rosa Scoble is Director of Strategic Planning at Brunel University London. Her areas of expertise are in the development of institutional strategies and, more specifically, research environments, metrics and pathways to impact. She is also an advocate for Open Research and the use of responsible metrics. She led Brunel’s RAE and REF submissions in 2008, 2014 and 2021.

She has applied her knowledge both nationally and globally through workshops, peer review activities, publications and funded projects. She led Brunel’s RAE and REF submissions in 2008, 2014 and 2021. In 2018, under the Jisc HEIDI Labs programme, she led a team of colleagues from across the sector to develop a REF2021 prototype tool that focused on the assessment of the strength of research environments drawing on UK sector-wide data sources.

She was a member of HEFCE’s Leadership, Governance & Management strategic board and a member of the REF2021 Institutional Level Environment pilot panel. She is on the Executive of HESPA (Higher Education Strategic Planners Association) and a member of the YERUN (Young European Research University Network) Policy Platform.

Roger Whitaker is Pro Vice-Chancellor for Research Innovation and Enterprise at Cardiff University, with overall responsibility for the University’s research and innovation strategy, and governance. Previously he has been Dean for Research and Innovation in the Physical Sciences and Engineering (2012-2021) with responsibilities for submission to REF2014 and REF2021. He has also been Head of Cardiff University’s School of Computer Science and Informatics between 2009 and 2013. His research interests concern the intersection of human and machine intelligence, leading a number of large-scale international research projects with European and American partners, including widespread industry engagement. Roger is also Director of Supercomputing Wales, representing a £19M investment supported by European funding in high performance computing equipment capabilities across the Universities of Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea.

Professor Christina Boswell is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Research and Enterprise at the University of Edinburgh, where she leads university strategy and policy on research and innovation, covering funding; translation, commercialisation and impact; research environment; and REF submission. She also serves as the British Academy’s Vice President for Public Policy. Christina’s own research focuses on the role of research and expertise in policymaking. She is founder of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy, and has enjoyed a range of consultancy roles including for the UN, OECD, European Commission, FCDO and Scottish Government. She recently chaired a major review of policy impact for the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the ESRC, which includes recommendations on how to improve the REF framework for Impact.

Karen Stroobants is a policy adviser and consultant on research policy and strategy, with a specific focus on research culture. She combines roles as director of CultureBase Consulting and as lead policy advisor on research landscape & economy at the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is a Vice-Chair of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment and a Governing Board Member for EuroScience. Previously, Karen held roles at RAND Europe and the Royal Society, where she led the development of the narrative Resumé for Researchers that since has been introduced by UKRI. Karen moved to the UK initially as a Marie Sklodowska-Curie post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Prior to this, she obtained her PhD in chemistry at KU Leuven in Belgium.

Cecilia is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute. She was the Chair of the UK 2021 REF’s ‘Architecture, Built Environment and Planning’ sub-panel. She is currently a member of the UK National Infrastructure Commission’s Levelling Up Advisory Panel, a Commissioner of the UK2070 Commission on Regional Inequalities, and a Commissioner of the UK Productivity Commission. Her research expertise includes strategic planning, spatial policy monitoring and analysis, urban and regional development, and housing and infrastructure planning. She has recently been working on a number of collaborative grants, including a five-year consortium project on ‘Tackling root causes upstream of unhealthy urban development’ funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership and a three-year project on ‘Eco-Urbanisation: Promoting Sustainable Development in Metropolitan Regions of China’ funded by the ESRC-NSFC Newton Fund Collaborative Research. She received the University of Manchester’s Distinguished Achievement Award ‘Researcher of the Year (Humanities)’ in 2021.