New professors sign the roll

Professor Allen's research focuses on how micro-organisms grow, die and interact. She aims to improve the efficacy of antibiotic treatments and to better understand how complex microbial communities work.

Professor Allen completed her undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge University and received a Masters degree in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania, before returning to Cambridge University for her PhD research. She carried out postdoctoral research at the AMOLF institute in Amsterdam and joined Edinburgh University in 2006.

Professor Arshad's research is in the area of race equality, in particular embedding multicultural and anti-racist approaches into school and higher education in the area of policy, curriculum and practice.

Professor Arshad completed a Diploma in Youth and Community Studies at Bulmershe College, Reading, received her MSc from Heriot-Watt University and her EdD from the University of Edinburgh. She has held several public appointments including that of Equal Opportunities Commissioner for Scotland and was on the Board of Scottish Further and Higher Education Funding Council.

Professor Baggs is a soil biogeochemist. Her research focuses on understanding plant-soil-microbe interactions, enhancing soil fertility, and lowering greenhouse gas production in soils. She works across temperate and tropical systems.

Professor Baggs completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol, her MSc at the University of Nottingham, and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She has several external roles including membership of NERC and BBSRC training and strategy advisory boards.

Professor Bailey’s research examines the relationship between high blood pressure (hypertension) and kidney disease, focussing particularly on harmful effects of high dietary salt intake.

Professor Bailey completed his undergraduate Degree at the University of Manchester and received his PhD from the University of London. He had fellowship training at UCL, CNRS Paris-Saclay and Yale University Medical School. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Biology and a member of The Physiological Society and the American Physiological Society.

Professor Bayer's research focuses on derived categories and wall-crossing, with an emphasis on questions in classical algebraic geometry.

Professor Bayer completed Master's degrees at University of Cambridge and University of Bonn, before receiving his PhD from University of Bonn. Prior to his appointment in Edinburgh, he has held positions at University of Utah and University of Connecticut.

Professor Bilbao studied at Harvard University (BA, Physics) and Stanford University (MSc, PhD Electrical Engineering).

His research is focused on computational and architectural acoustics for purposes of virtual audio rendering. He has led two European Research Council funded projects devoted to these topics, and is currently the director of the Acoustics and Audio Group at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Boardman’s research focuses on the developing human brain.

Professor Boardman completed medical training, his BSc, and MSc at University College London. He received his PhD from Imperial College London. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and is General Secretary of the Neonatal Society.

Professor Bowd's research is focused on the history of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, with special attention to Venice and its empire.

Professor Bowd was educated at Galashiels Academy, completed his degrees at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Poitiers and taught at the Manchester Metropolitan University before returning to Edinburgh in 2005.

Professor Braun’s research focuses primarily on the fields of succession law and the law of trusts, particularly in historical and comparative contexts. She is also interested in legal history, the study of the intellectual history of the law and, especially, the development of various forms of legal scholarship and its interaction with and impact upon judicial decision-making.

Professor Braun completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Genoa and received a PhD in Private Comparative Law from the University of Trento. Prior to coming to Edinburgh, she was Professor of Comparative Private Law at the University of Oxford. Professor Braun is an elected Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law as well as a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of European and Comparative Law in Oxford.

Professor Brennan completed her Bachelor of (Agricultural and Food) Engineering (BE) degree at University College Dublin in 1998 and received her MSc. International Agricultural and Food Marketing and PhD (by published work) from Newcastle University in 1999 and 2001, respectively. She held a series of academic positions at Newcastle University between 1999-2013 before moving to University of Edinburgh Business School in November 2013.

Professor Brennan is a food consumer researcher who explores the complex, dynamic relationships people have with food, how these shape everyday food practices, underpin contemporary food policy challenges and which are considered very resistant to change. She complements her theoretical and conceptual contributions to food marketing and society with creative interdisciplinary collaborations and innovative mixed method research offering new insights into everyday food practices, especially those considered “less than ideal” and often practiced behind closed, domestic doors (i.e. eating food past its use-by date; throwing out edible food; under-cooking of meat; over-consumption of food). Her research also explores the concept of sustainable food in terms of production, procurement and consumption and she is an active member of FRIED, the Food Researchers in Edinburgh Network, and the Scottish Food Coalition.

Professor Bronsvoort completed his veterinary degree at Bristol in 1988 and when on to work in Cameroon managing drug trials for human river blindness. He did his masters in preventive veterinary medicine at UC Davis, California, and his PhD on the epidemiology of foot-and-mouth disease at Liverpool. He also has a master in applied statistics and is a Diplomat of the European College of Veterinary Public Health.

Professor Bronsvoort’s research interests are broad, working in a number of areas of infectious disease epidemiology in the UK and sub-Saharan Africa. His main focus is population studies of major transboundary diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease and bovine tuberculosis, and zoonoses such as brucellosis and rabies, the evaluation of diagnostic tests in African livestock populations and the impact of pathogen co-infections on disease detection and progression. He is also committed to veterinary education and training of students in epidemiology and veterinary public health.

Professor Camp works on computer simulations and theories of complex fluids such as colloidal suspensions, lubricants, and polymer solutions. Professor Camp completed an undergraduate degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Physics at the University of Bristol. He was then an Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of British Columbia before joining the University of Edinburgh in 2000.

Professor Chrisman’s research focuses on discourse about what one ought to do and believe and connected issues about agency, autonomy, responsibility, and community membership.

Professor Chrisman completed his bachelor degree at Rice University in Houston, Texas and received his MA and PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a member of the Young Academy of Scotland (RSE) and the Scots Philosophical Association.

Professor Coyle’s research focuses on pedagogies which support learning through a language which is not the first language of the learner. She is known for her conceptual 4Cs Framework in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and models for Pluriliteracies teaching for learning (PTL).

Professor Coyle completed her Master’s Degree at the University of Leicester and her PhD from the University of Nottingham. She was awarded the honour of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French Government for her services to French Education and the Lord Dearing Teaching Excellence Award whilst associate professor at the University of Nottingham. She has subsequently worked as Professor of Learning Innovation at the University of Aberdeen where she was Dean of the School of Education from 2012-2016.

ContentProfessor Duarte d’Almeida’s research focuses on general jurisprudence and on legal reasoning, argumentation, and rhetoric. He was educated at Lisbon (BA, LLM) and Oxford (DPhil).

Professor Davé’s research focuses on understanding the physics driving the formation and evolution of galaxies from the Big Bang until today, using state of the art supercomputer simulations combined with multi-wavelength observations from telescopes around the world.

Professor Davé obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, his MSc from the California Institute of Technology, and his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1998 from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was awarded a Spitzer Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton University, followed by a Hubble Fellowship at Steward Observatory, before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona in 2003. In 2013 took up the South African National Research Chair in Cosmology with Multi-Wavelength Data at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, which he held until arriving in Edinburgh. He is a member of the Royal Society of South Africa and the International Astronomical Union.

Professor Dhaliwal’s research aims to harness multidisciplinary approaches and team science to develop and implement new methodologies that will permit disease characterisation and intervention with a focus on molecular imaging and interventional healthcare technology with  translational goals.

Professor Dhaliwal completed his undergraduate medical training in Edinburgh including an intercalated BSc in Microbiology. He undertook general profession training in London and completed a PhD in Edinburgh in 2013 and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London in 2015. He is an Honorary Consultant Physician in the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Professor Djikeng’s research, capacity building and international development activities focus on comparative genomics, functional genomics and metagenomics with the following main objectives: i) development and adaptation of tools and products for use to improve tropical livestock productivity and resilience; ii) assessment, characterization and utilization of tropical livestock genetic diversity and iii) leveraging livestock development opportunities in low and middle incomes countries (LMICs) as important drivers for agricultural development and contributors to sustainable development.

Professor Djikeng serves on international scientific advisory boards, juries and has held senior research and management leadership positions globally. 

Professor Djikeng completed undergraduate studies (BSc Hons and MSc) at the University of Yaoundé I (Cameroon) and received PhD from Brunel University (UK). He conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine (USA) and has held faculty positions in the USA (Yale University and the J Craig Venter Institute) and other senior leaderships roles in biosciences research to support agricultural and global development.

Professor Dockrell’s research focuses on host pathogen interactions with particular emphasis on innate immunity in the lung.

Professor Dockrell trained in Medicine at Trinity College Dublin and undertook specialty training at the Mayo Clinic, USA before working at the University of Sheffield where he was a co-founding director of the Florey Institute for Host pathogen Interactions.

Professor du Plessis’s research focuses on the complex and multifaceted relationships between law and society in the Roman world. Additional research interests include the use of Roman legal principles in the creation of modern law as well as the reception of Roman law in Scotland.

Professor du Plessis completed his undergraduate degrees in South Africa and received his PhD from the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and has held visiting professorships at a number of European universities.

Professor Duguid’s research focuses on the unravelling the cellular and circuit mechanisms underpinning simple and skilled motor behaviours.

Professor Duguid completed his undergraduate degree at Aberdeen University and received his PhD from the London School of Pharmacy. He has held a number of Wellcome Trust fellowship positions (Advanced Training Fellowship & Career Development Fellowship) and is is presently a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Basic Biomedical Science.

Professor Fan’s Research focuses on solving problems in particulate materials processing through interdisciplinary approaches, microwave assisted CO2 capture using solid adsorbents and solvents, photocatalysts for environmental remediation, fluids in porous materials for enhancing heat and mass transfer in oil recovery, fuel cell, energy storage.

Professor Fan completed his undergraduate degree at Jiangxi University of Science and Technology and received his Master degree from Beijing General Research Institute of Mining & Metallurgy, and PhD from the University of Birmingham. He is the editorial board member of 4 international journals, and a member of Scientific Council of the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre, and a technical committee member for a number of international conferences. Professor Fan received the British Foundrymen Award from the Institute of British Foundrymen in 2009, and 3 awards from Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, and China Nonferrous Metals Industry Corporation. He has authored or co-authored over 170 peer reviewed publications.

Professor Finney is chair of power electronics, covering power semiconductor device applications, converter topologies and the use of power electronics within energy systems. He obtained his MEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Loughborough University of Technology in 1988 and subsequently worked at the Electricity Council R&D centre at Capenhurst, Cheshire.

In 1990, he embarked on an academic career, joining the power electronics research group at Heriot-Watt University where he receive his PhD in 1994 and remained as a member of academic staff until 2005. In 2005, he moved to the University of Strathclyde where developed research into utility scale power electronics, taking over as of head of Power Electronics research in 2010. In 2017, he was appointed to the international IEEE IAS Distinguished Lecturer programme.

Professor Fox's research focuses on British social and cultural history, c.1500–c.1800. He is particularly interested in popular culture and communication in early modern Britain and among his publications is the double-award winning book Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700 (Oxford, 2000).

Professor Fox read History at Jesus College, Cambridge after which he spent a year at Harvard University as a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow. He returned to Jesus College to do his PhD before being elected to a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He was then appointed as a Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh and was subsequently promoted to Reader before becoming Professor of Social History.

Professor Fox’s research focuses on historical aspects of trust and monetary law in common law and mixed jurisdictions.

Professor Fox completed his undergraduate degrees at the University of Otago in New Zealand and his PhD at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.  He is a door tenant at Maitland Chambers, Lincoln’s Inn, and before his appointment in Edinburgh was Fellow in Law at St John’s College, Cambridge.

Professor Grant’s research is on the palliative care approaches, and services in Africa and Asia, and the intersection of faith, compassion and health.

Professor Grant completed an MA in The University of Aberdeen and a PhD at The University of Edinburgh. She is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians Edinburgh and a Member of the Faculty of Public Health. Professor Grant is Assistant Principal and Director of the Global Health Academy.

Professor Greene’s research focuses on the start-up, growth and failure of entrepreneurial businesses.

Professor Greene completed his undergraduate degree and MPhil at Sheffield University and received his PhD from Durham University. He is a consulting editor for the International Small Business Journal and has worked with a range of start-up and growth entrepreneurs, major banks, national governments and the OECD and the European Commission.

Professor Hagendorff's research focuses on bank risk and systemic risk as well as on corporate governance and the risk-return profile of companies. Professor Hagendorff completed his studies at the University of Leeds. He has held posts at Leeds, Edinburgh, Cardiff and the Bank of Spain before re-joining Edinburgh.

Professor Hay’s research focuses on the development of renewable liver tissue from pluripotent stem cells for human biomedicine.

Professor Haywards’s research focuses on the study of quantitative traits in populations with a major interest in kidney-related phenotypes.

Professor Hayward completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Stirling and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh.  She is currently Principal Investigator and Programme Coordinator for the QTL in Health and Disease programme at the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine.

Professor Holloway’s research focuses on public health and alcohol related harm to reduce the risks and harms of alcohol in society through the evaluation of complex interventions whilst working to influence and shape alcohol policy. She also has a strong interest in nurse political leadership, working at the interphase between nurse led health and social care research and influencing globally relevant health and social care policy.

Professor Holloway completed her undergraduate degree at The University of Abertay and received her PhD from Glasgow Caledonian University. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has held a Non-Executive Director Board appointment at the Royal College of Nursing (RCNi).

Wenxuan Hou is Chair in Corporate Finance at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He received his PhD from the University of Manchester. He was at Durham University as a Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer until he joined Edinburgh in 2012. Wen is a member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Young Academy, the President-elect of China Economic Association (UK/Europe) and a Board Director of Asian Finance Association. Wen has served as an Associate Editor or Guest Editor of Abacus, Corporate Governance: An International Review, European Journal of Finance, Finance Research Letters, International Small Business Journal and Journal of Business Ethics. His research interests cover corporate finance and governance, business ethics and financial markets. He published 5 books and around 35 articles in ABS-3/4* journals.

Professor Hope’s research focuses on innate immune responses of ruminants, in particular with respect to infectious diseases including bovine tuberculosis and Johne’s Disease. Her research aims to define the mechanisms whereby natural immunity is achieved and how protective immunity is induced by vaccination.

Professor Hope completed her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences (Microbiology) at the University of Birmingham and received her PhD in Immunology from the University of Manchester.

Professor Houston’s research focusses on understanding the genetic basis of disease resistance in aquaculture species, and on methods of improving resistance to infectious diseases in aquaculture breeding programs.

Professor Houston completed his undergraduate degree at Loughborough University and his PhD at the University of Aberdeen.

Professor Hulme's research integrates synthetic methodology development with chemical biology to provide molecular level insight to challenges in biology and medicine.

Professor Hulme completed her undergraduate degree and PhD at the University of Cambridge, and carried out postdoctoral research at Colorado State University, USA. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and is President of the RSC Organic Division Council.

Professor Kao’s research focuses on understanding fundamental processes driving infectious disease epidemics using mathematical and simulation models, in particular in diseases where incidence is driven by complex ecological interactions.

Professor Kao completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in Engineering Physics, and received his MSc and PhD in computational and theoretical physics from the University of Guelph. He held Wellcome Trust Research Fellowships at the Universities of Oxford and Glasgow before joining Edinburgh.

Professor Kelley’s research covers a wide range of Earth Sciences including noble gas geochemistry and determining the rates and timescales of geological processes. He le dthe development of an online virtual microscope for Earth Sciences and is undertaking research in the use of online teaching methods.

Professor Kelley completed his undergraduate degree in Geology at the University of Liverpool and received his PhD from Bedford College, University of London. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of London.

Professor Kerr’s activities focus on taking research insights and applying them into public policy and practice to support the development of thriving and resilient low carbon societies.

Professor Kerr took his PhD at Edinburgh, after which he spent a period working for an Edinburgh spin-out company, ECCM, and developing new business ideas and clean energy projects in Asia and Europe for E3. He is Executive Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI); co-Director of the Centre of Expertise on Climate Change (ClimateXChange), and has been a member of or chaired various public and private sector Boards in UK and China.

Professor Koslowski’s major research interests are comparative and feminist scholarship into the division of work in societies. This covers policy areas such as parental leave and early years education and childcare. She is the founding Director of the Edinburgh Q-Step Centre, providing undergraduate social scientists with a thorough training in quantitative methods. Her university education spans the Universities of Oxford (DPhil Sociology), including time at the EUI in Florence; Essex (MA Politics), and Southampton (BA Contemporary Europe).

Professor Lang is an expert in the law and practice of international economic law. His research focusses substantively on the function of international law in the constitution of the global economy, and traverses a number of more general themes such as the relationship between law and expert knowledge, theoretical international law and economics, and regulatory diversity in the context of economic globalisation.

Professor Lang, has a combined BA/LLB from the University of Sydney, and his PhD is from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, he was Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics, where he worked form 2006-2017. From 2004-6, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge.

Professor McKie received her undergraduate degree in social policy at Ulster University, MSc in Public Policy at Bath University and PhD in sociology at Durham University. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Director of Public Engagement for the British Sociological Association, and was a member of the REF 2014 Sub Panel for Sociology.

Professor Martin's research aims to further our understanding of our universe at subatomic scales.  Professor Martin collaborates on experiments using high-energy particle colliders to investigate the fundamental particles and forces that exist at the smallest accessible distances.  Professor Martin works with two international collider physics collaborations: the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for Particle Physics near Geneva Switzerland, and with the CLICdp collaboration who are investigating the potential of a new high-energy electron--anti-electron collider.

Professor Martin received a BSc in Mathematical Physics (1996) and a PhD in experimental particle physics (2000) from the University of Edinburgh. She was a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University in Illinois for 5 years, before returning to Edinburgh as a lecturer in physics in 2005. Professor Martin is a member of the RSE Young Academy of Scotland and sits on several review committees for the UK's Science and Technology Research Council (STFC).

Professor Mellanby completed his undergraduate veterinary degree at the University of Glasgow and subsequently was awarded a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He is an RCVS and ECVIM-CA Diplomate in Small Animal Medicine.

Professor Mellanby’s research focusses on exploring the relationship between nutrition, inflammation and health outcomes.

Professor Moore's research focuses on the comparative analysis of diaries, letters, and memoirs written in modern languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.

Professor Moore completed his BA at Oberlin College, MA at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and PhD at Princeton University. He has held postdoctoral research appointments at Harvard University and Oxford, and was a recipient of the Philip Leverhulme Prize for his work in comparative history.

Professor Mutapi conducts basic scientific research on human immune function and dysfunction in helminth exposed populations to inform stakeholders, governments and funding organisations on global helminth control strategies, policy formulation and implementation.

Professor Mutapi completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Zimbabwe and her DPhil at Linacre College at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Africa Science Leadership Program and a Fellow of the African Academy of Science.

Professor Nair’s research focuses on child pneumonia particularly those related to respiratory viral infections. Professor Nair completed his undergraduate and specialist medical training in Paediatrics from University of Delhi, India and received his MSc and PhD from the University of Edinburgh.

He has been an advisor to World Health Organization, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, PATH and Government of India.

Professor Neff’s research focuses on the history of international law, and particularly on the history of the law relating to armed conflict and neutrality.

Professor Nussey completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Nottingham, his Masters degree at the University of York and his PhD in Edinburgh. He subsequently did post-doctoral work in Cambridge prior to returning to Edinburgh supported by NERC and then BBSRC funded research fellowships.

His work focuses on the causes and consequences of variation in the ageing process and immunity in wild animals.

Professor Ouenniche’s research focuses on methodological contributions to predictive and prescriptive analytics with applications in performance evaluation and management, risk modelling and analysis, banking, public sector partnerships, resilience, manufacturing, transport and energy.

Professor Ouenniche holds BSc. in Mathematics and MSc. in Operational Research from the University of Montreal (Canada), and PhD in Operations Management from Laval University (Quebec, Canada). He is a member of the Editorial Board of several academic journals and an Associate Editor of Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications.

Professor Pankaj obtained his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and PhD from University of Wales Swansea.

Professor Pankaj established and leads the Computational Biomechanics group at the University. His research focuses on developing and exploiting computer methods and mechanics in the solution of real clinical problems related to bone diseases, fracture treatment and joint replacement.

Professor Pollard explores the molecular and cellular regulation of neural stem cells and how this becomes deregulated and highjacked by brain cancer stem cells.

Professor Pollard completed his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Bath. He carried out his PhD in developmental genetics at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, followed by postdoctoral research at the Universities of Edinburgh and Cambridge, latterly as a Beit Memorial Research Fellow. He established his independent laboratory at University College London, before relocated to Edinburgh 2013. He currently holds the prestigious Cancer Research UK Senior Research Fellowship.

Professor Roberts’ research focuses on how marine ecosystems respond to change in particular by using cold-water corals in the deep ocean as a model system.

Professor Roberts completed his undergraduate degree at the University of York and his PhD at the University of Glasgow. He is a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He is currently coordinating the European Union ATLAS project (2016-20) to develop an integrated spatial management plan for deep-sea ecosystems across the North Atlantic Ocean. Professor Roberts holds Adjunct Faculty status at the University of North Carolina Wilmington (USA).

Professor Ryazanova-Clarke’s research lies in sociolinguistics and discourse studies in relation to Russian with a focus on identity, globalisation and transnationalism.

Professor Ryazanova-Clarke completed her undergraduate degree at Herzen University (St Petersburg) and PhD from the University of Strathclyde. She is Director of the University’s Princess Dashkova Russian Centre, Series Editor of the ‘Russian Language and Society’ book series at Edinburgh University Press, and a member of International Advisory Board for the Rustaveli National Research Foundation, Republic of Georgia.

Professor Sanguinetti researches machine learning methodologies for data integration in computational biology. He completed a Laurea (MSc) in Physics at the University of Genova and obtained his DPhil in Mathematics from the University of Oxford in 2004. His research has received several awards including the 2012 PNAS Cozzarelli Prize from the US National Academy of Science, and best paper/ poster awards at the QEST 2013, ECCB 2016 and HiTSeq 2017 conferences.

Professor Savill’s research focusses on phagocyte clearance of cells dying by apoptosis and the role of this process in regulation and resolution of inflammation. 

Professor Savill’s first degree was a BA in Physiological Sciences from St Catherine’s College at the University of Oxford, followed by MBChB at Sheffield University Medical School.  He subsequently obtained a PhD at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, University of London. He returns full-time to the University after a 10-year period working part-time as Chief Scientist in the Scottish Government Health Directorates and then, from October 2010, Chief Executive of the Medical Research Council.

Professor Schirmer’s research focuses on nuclear envelope functions, ranging from nuclear size regulation in cancer to innate immune signalling through the peripheral channels of the nuclear pore complex and how herpesviruses break through the nuclear envelope during infection. A central focus of his work is on how tissue-specific nuclear envelope transmembrane proteins direct changes in spatial radial genome organisation during tissue development and how this is altered in several heritable human diseases ranging from muscular dystrophies to lipodystrophies.

Professor Schirmer completed his undergraduate degree at The University of Chicago after which he spent several years at the US National Institute’s of Health where his work led to a change in the herpesvirus nomenclature and separate discovery of the 7th human herpesvirus. He then returned to The University of Chicago to get his PhD where he found the first evidence of a physical interaction between a prion and a chaperone protein.  He changed direction to the nuclear envelope in his post-doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute where his investigations increased the number of known nuclear envelope proteins by roughly 50-fold.

Professor Shaver’s research focuses on improving the sustainability of plastics and functional materials through design of new catalysts, monomers and reactions.

Professor Shaver completed his BSc Honours degree at Mount Allison University and his PhD at the University of British Columbia, followed by an NSERC post-doctoral fellow at Imperial College London. He returned to Canada as an Assistant Professor at the University of Prince Edward Island before moving across the Atlantic again to join the University of Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellow.

Professor Simm’s research focuses on the development of sustainable agri-food systems and the role of livestock genetic resources in these. Professor Simm received his undergraduate degree from the University of Wales and his PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He is a fellow of the Royal Agricultural Societies and the Royal Society of Biology.

Professor Smith’s research focuses on how languages are shaped by learning and use, and how biases in these processes can explain the fundamental structural properties shared by all human languages.

Professor Smith received his MA, MSc and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He held his first faculty appointment at Northumbria University, returning to Edinburgh to take up a lectureship in 2010.

Professor Spires-Jones' research focuses on understanding the changes in the brain that occur during dementias such as Alzheimer's disease in order to develop effective treatments.

Professor Spires-Jones completed her undergraduate degrees at the University of Texas at Austin and received her MSc and DPhil from the University of Oxford. Prior to moving to Scotland in 2013, she ran a group studying Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis with an emphasis on synaptic pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School, where she was an instructor from 2006-2011 and Assistant Professor from 2011-2013.

Professor Uhrín’s research focuses on the development and application of liquid state NMR spectroscopy to the structure elucidation of biomolecules, organic molecules and complex mixtures. 

Professor Uhrín completed his MSc degree in Chemistry at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava and received his PhD from Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Mark van Rossum's research seeks to understand brain processes, in particular those involved in perception and in memory, in computational terms.

Mark van Rossum holds an undergraduate degree from the Utrecht University and a PhD from the University of Amsterdam.

In addition he is an associate member of the University's Centre for Integrative Physiology and of its Centre for Cognitive and Neural Systems.

Professor Walmsley’s research focuses on defining the role of oxygen sensing pathways and metabolic flux in myeloid cell mediated inflammation and host pathogen responses and the therapeutic potential of manipulating these pathways in chronic inflammatory lung diseases.

Professor Walmsley completed her medical degree at Edinburgh University.  Following a MRC Training Fellowship in Cambridge during which she gained her PhD, Sarah moved to the University of Sheffield where she held a Wellcome Intermediate Clinical Fellowship followed by a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellowship, which she transferred to Edinburgh.  She is a member of the Association of Physicians of GB and Ireland and the Royal College of Physicians and an Associate Director of the Edinburgh Clinical Academic Training Scheme.

Professor Genevieve Warwick's research is concerned with collections and object-based forms of knowledge, artists' drawings and artistic memory, prints and artistic translations, theories of ornament, architecture and urbanism, art and theatre, art and anthropology.

Professor Genevieve Warwick received her BA from the University of Oxford, MA from the University of Toronto, and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University.  In 2012-17 she was Editor and Chair of Art History, national journal of the Association of Art History UK.  During 2017-20 she will be a Major Research Fellow of the Leverhulme Trust.

Professor Watson’s research focuses on what big genomic datasets can tell us about farm animal productivity and the structure and function of farm animal microbiomes

Professor Watson completed his undergraduate degree at York University and went on to complete a Masters in Biological Computation, also at York. Professor Watson received his PhD from Edinburgh University in 2015.  He is a passionate advocate of open science, and serves as academic or associate editor for a number of open-access journals.  He also has appointments to the scientific advisory boards of a number of genomic enterprises.

Professor Webster’s research focuses on the discovery of new small molecule therapeutics for the treatment of diverse conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, multiple organ failure, diabetes and liver disease.

Professor Webster received his BSc and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His collaborative research with industry was awarded the 2016 Teamwork in Innovation Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Professor Zahedieh's research focuses on the economic and social history of the early modern Atlantic world. She has a particular interest in the Caribbean in the period of slavery and in the ways that colonial expansion shaped British economic development.

Professor Zahedieh undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate training in Economic History at the London School of Economics where she stayed on to do postdoctoral research. She has taught Economic and Social History at the University of Edinburgh since 1990 and became Director of the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies in 2014. She has held fellowships from the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Leverhulme Trust, the National Maritime Museum, the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, and All Souls College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, member of the Executive Committee of the Economic History Society, member of the Editorial Board of the Economic History Review, and member of various advisory boards including the Academic Advisory Panel of the Museum of London.

Professor Zwicky’s research focuses on finding new sources of matter anti-matter asymmetry in particle decays (Flavour Physics) as well as on global properties of quantum field theories at short and large distances (Renormalisation Group Flow) .

Professor Zwicky completed his undergraduate studies at EPFL Lausanne, Carnegie Mellon University with a diploma in Theoretical Physics from ETH Zurich. He did his PhD at the University of Zurich with stays at CERN.