Audit Committee biographies
NERC is committed to being open and transparent, and so here we provide some background on members of NERC's Audit Committee.
Professor Paul Curran
Chairman
Professor Paul Curran is Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physical Geography at City University London.
Paul studied at the Universities of Sheffield, Southampton and Bristol. During the 1980s and early 1990s he held academic appointments at the Universities of Reading, Sheffield and Swansea and was a Senior Research Associate with NASA in California.
From 2005-10, Paul was Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physical Geography at Bournemouth University. For the preceding twelve years Paul held the positions of Head of the Geography Department, Dean of Science, Head of Winchester School of Art and Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton.
He has served on several UK committees, including the NERC Terrestrial Life Sciences Committee, Royal Society Working Party on carbon sinks and the RAE Panel for Geography and Chaired the HEFCE Higher Education Workforce Steering Group. Paul is currently a member of two Universities UK policy committees and the QAA Board. Paul has served on many international committees, including eight NASA grant boards and ten ESA science advisory and funding boards. He is currently President of the Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Society.
His research is in the field of environmental Earth observation from satellite and airborne sensors.
Mr Rowan Douglas
Mr Rowan Douglas is the managing director of Willis Analytics for Willis Re, the world's third largest insurance and re-insurance broker. He is also Chairman of the Willis Research Network.
After graduating with degrees in Geography from Durham and Bristol Universities and underwriting reinsurance at Lloyds, Mr Douglas founded WIRE Ltd, an intellectual broking company arranging research between financial markets (especially insurance) and academia. WIRE was sold to the Willis Group in November 2000. Mr Douglas has since held a number of senior positions with the organisation including head of e-business and executive director, Willis Capital Markets.
In 2005, whilst in his current post with Willis Analytics, Mr Douglas founded the Willis Research Network, which has become the world's largest collaboration between academia and the insurance industry, supporting university research in Europe, North America and across Asia pacific. The WRN undertakes research to evaluate the frequency, severity and impact of natural catastrophes, and develop private and public sector risk financing to share the costs of these extreme events across populations.
In June 2011, Rowan was appointed as a member of the Council for Science and Technology, the UK Government's top-level advisory body on science and technology policy issues, which reports directly to the Prime Minister.
Mr Bryan Thompson
Bryan has held finance, planning and commercial directorships with blue chip multi-national companies operating in a variety of different business sectors.
Bryan is a non-executive director and chair of the audit committee for the Oxfordshire PCT, he is also a non-executive director of the Ministry of Defence Police & Guarding Agency and sits on their audit committee.
Bryan currently runs a business consultancy specialising in turnaround management of failing companies and holds other directorships in a marketing, a technology and a specialist engineering business.