NERC Council biographies
NERC is committed to being open and transparent, and so here we give some background to members of NERC's Council. A register of Council members' interests is also publicly available.
Mr Edmund Wallis
Chairman
Ed Wallis has been Chairman of W S Atkins since January
2005 having retired from Powergen in August 2003, where his final role
was that of Chairman and Chief Executive. Ed is also a Member of the Board
of Directors, Birmingham Royal Ballet and a Governor of the Royal Ballet
School.
Ed qualified in Electrical Engineering at the University of Aston in 1962 and in General Management Studies at Henley Management College in 1978. Ed was awarded the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology by Brunel University and Doctor of Science by Aston University.
Ed is a Companion of the British Institute of Management and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
Professor Alan Thorpe
Chief Executive
Alan graduated from the University of Warwick with a physics degree in 1973 and from Imperial College with a doctorate in atmospheric physics in 1976. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Imperial College for five years and after a short interval at the Met Office took up a lectureship in the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading in 1982. He became a professor of meteorology in 1991 and head of department in 1996.
His research involves the basic dynamics and predictability of weather and climate. From 1999 to 2001, Alan was Director of the Met Office's Hadley Centre for climate prediction and research.
In 2001 he became the first director of the newly-established NERC Centres for Atmospheric Science, which is a distributed NERC Collaborative Centre involving over 15 universities. He became Chief Executive of NERC in April 2005.
He has been Vice-President of the Royal Meteorological Society and was awarded their L F Richardson Prize (1979) and Buchan Prize (1992) for his research. He was a founding co-chair of the World Meteorological Organisation's research programme "THORPEX: A World Weather Research Programme". He is an assessor on the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs's (Defra) Science Advisory Council and a member of a number of national and international science committees. Professor Thorpe is visiting professor at the University of Reading.
Professor Paul Curran
Professor Paul Curran, Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Physical Geography, Bournemouth University and Visiting Professor of Physical Geography, University of Southampton.
Professor Curran studied at the Universities of Sheffield, Southampton and Bristol; held academic appointments at the Universities of Reading, Sheffield and Swansea and was a Senior Research Associate with NASA in the 1980s.
Prior to his appointment with Bournemouth University, he was Head of the Geography Department, Dean of Science, Head of Winchester School of Art and latterly Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Southampton.
He has served on several UK committees, including the NERC Terrestrial Life Sciences Committee, and the RAE 2001 Panel for Geography. He is currently on both the Universities UK Research Policy Committee and Business and Industry Policy Committee and QAA Board.
He has served on many international committees, including eight NASA grant boards and ten ESA science advisory and funding boards. He is currently a member of two ESA Envisat committees and an International Society for Remote Sensing and Photogrammetry committee.
His research is in the field of environmental Earth observation from satellite and airborne sensors.
Professor Huw Davies
Huw Davies is professor of physics at the Institute for Atmospheric & Climate Science of the ETH Zürich, and head of the institute's Atmospheric Dynamics Group. He studied at the University of Wales and at Imperial College, London. Before his appointment at the ETH Zürich he lectured at the University of Reading. He has served as president of the International Association of Meteorology & Atmospheric Science, is a member of the Academia Europaea and co-chairs the International THORPEX programmes science advisory board. His research is in the fields of atmospheric dynamics and short-term climate variability.
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.
Professor Alastair Fitter
Professor Alastair Fitter is pro vice-chancellor for research at the University of York. Professor Fitter studied at the universities of Oxford and Liverpool before moving to the University of York. He was head of biology at York from 1997 to 2004 and was appointed pro-vice-chancellor for research in 2004. His research interests focus on plant and microbial behaviour in a changing world, including the functioning of root systems and mycorrhizas, their role in the global carbon cycle and how environmental factors control their growth. He was president of the British Ecological Society from 2003 to 2005 and director of the UK Population Biology Network from 2004-2007. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2005 and is currently an editor of the journal New Phytologist, a trustee of the National Biodiversity Network Trust and the York Archaeological Trust, and a member of the Natural England Science Advisory Committee.
Professor Anne Glover
Anne Glover was appointed as Chief Scientific Advisor (CSA) for Scotland with effect from 1 August 2006. In addition to her work as CSA, which she undertakes for four days a week, Professor Glover continues her work at the University of Aberdeen, where she is a professor in the Institute of Medical Sciences. She graduated from Edinburgh University with a degree in biochemistry and PhD from University of Cambridge in microbial biochemistry.
Currently, Anne's main research areas are molecular microbial ecology, microbial signalling and biosensor technology. The biosensors have been applied to diagnose environmental pollution and have been commercialised through a university spin-out company.
Anne has served on a number of committees including NERC's Freshwater Sciences Peer Review Committee (1998-2001) and is currently a member of the NERC Environmental Genomics Steering Committee and the DTI/BBSRC LINK Bioremediation Programme Management Committee.
She is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology (1995) is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2005) and has served as an editor for a number of European and American scientific journals.
Professor Charles Godfray
Professor Charles Godfray is a professor in zoology at the University of Oxford and is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Previously the director of NERC's Centre for Population Biology at Imperial College, Professor Godfray has participated in a number of NERC panels and advisory committees and is currently on the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology's Science Advisory Panel. He is a member of the Science Advisory Council for the European Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT), amongst other international committees.
Professor Godfray is a population biologist with broad interests in environment, ecology and evolution. In addition to his core work on fundamental environmental science, Professor Godfray has published in areas such as sustainable agriculture and epidemiology and recently co-organised a Royal Society discussion meeting, 'The Environmental e-Science Revolution' which brought together physical and biological scientists to discuss better ways of harnessing modern cybertechnology in the environmental sciences.
Professor Alex Halliday
Alex is professor of geochemistry at the University of Oxford following six years at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. He has received particular recognition as a leader in developing new techniques for studying large-scale planetary processes from moon formation to ocean circulation. He has served on numerous scientific review and advisory panels and is the author / co-author of more than 270 peer-reviewed scientific publications, including over 35 in Science and Nature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society and is recognised as a world leader in environmental science. He is also a trustee of the British Museum of Natural History.
Mr Peter Hazell
Peter has had over 30 years experience in corporate finance and audit practice, with Deloitte Haskins & Sells/Coopers & Lybrand /PricewaterhouseCoopers. He is chairman of the Argent Group and Chairman of the Audit Committee for BRIT Insurance Holdings PLC, UK Coal PLC, and Smith & Williamson Ltd. He is a member of the Competition Commission, the UK's regulatory authority dealing with monopolies and mergers. Mr Hazell is currently the Chairman of the NERC Audit Committee.
Professor Michael Lockwood
Mike is a professor of both Space Plasma Physics, and Energy and the Environment at the University of Southampton. He is also Chief Scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory's Space Science Department (Science and Technology Facilities Council), and a guest lecturer for the University Centre in Svalbard.
He studied physics at Exeter University, where he also gained a PhD in upper atmosphere studies. His research interests are in the phenomena that cross the mesopause (a high-level region of the Earth's atmosphere) and how solar variability has masked the full impact of man's contribution to climate change.
In addition to several Research Council committees, Professor Lockwood has served on many national and international committees including the Royal Society, Royal Astronomical Society, EISCAT (the European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association), the European Geophysical Union, the European Space Agency Cluster Ground Working Group, Geospace Environment Modelling and the International Association of Geomagnetism & Aeronomy.
Professor Thomas Meagher
Tom is Professor and Chair of Plant Biology at the University of St Andrews. He has served on NERC's Environmental Genomics Steering Committee and is currently a member of Defra's Science Advisory Council.
He studied botany at the University of South Florida, Florida, and gained a PhD in Botany and Genetics at Duke University, North Carolina. His research interests include plant evolutionary biology, conservation biology and biodiversity, and public understanding of science.
Tom has maintained a strategic perspective on science throughout his career and has served on funding panels for the US National Science Foundation, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, and the Academy of Finland. He has also been actively engaged in science policy as chair of various workshops and task forces funded by the US NSF.
Professor Julia Slingo OBE
Professor Julia Slingo took up the post of Met Office Chief Scientist in February 2009. Prior to that she was the Director of Climate Research in NERC's National Centre for Atmospheric Science; she held that post at the University of Reading, where she continues as a Professor of Meteorology. In 2006 she founded the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at Reading, aimed at addressing the cross disciplinary challenges of climate change and its impacts.
Professor Slingo has had a long-term career in climate modelling and research, working at the Met Office, the European Centre for Medium Range Forecasting (ECMWF) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the USA. Her personal research addresses problems in tropical climate variability, its influence on the global climate, its role in seasonal to decadal climate prediction, and its response to climate change. Increasingly Prof. Slingo's research considers the multi-disciplinary aspects of the impacts of climate variability and change on crops and water resources, and hence the need to improve the representation of weather systems and rainfall distributions in climate prediction models.
Professor Slingo has contributed to the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She has served as a member of several national and international committees, including the Met Office and ECMWF Scientific Advisory Committees, and in 2007 was appointed to the Joint Scientific Committee of the World Climate Research Programme. She is regularly involved in Royal Society activities, and in 2008 became the first woman President of the Royal Meteorological Society.
Professor Andrew Watson
Professor Andrew Watson is a professor of the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia (UEA) and a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has been a member of several NERC committees, including the steering committee for the RAPID thematic programme, and contributed to the latest NERC Strategy as a member of the Earth System Science Review Group. He has also been involved with a number of international advisory boards such as the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Bjerknes Climate Centre, Norway.
Professor Watson's areas of expertise encompass marine biology, physics and chemistry, atmospheric and planetary sciences and Earth system science. He has extensive experience of leading large research groups specialising in marine biogeochemistry, originally at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory as a NERC employee, and since 1996, at UEA.
Professor Robert (Bob) Watson
Bob's career has evolved from being a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, to a US Federal Government program manager/director at the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA), to a scientific/policy advisor in the US Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP), White House, to a scientific advisor, manager and chief scientist at the World Bank, to a Chair of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, the Director for Strategic Direction for the Tyndall centre, and Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.
In parallel to Bob's formal positions he has chaired, co-chaired or directed international scientific, technical and economic assessments of stratospheric ozone depletion, biodiversity/ecosystems (the GBA and MA), climate change (IPCC) and agricultural S&T (IAASTD).
Bob's main areas of expertise include managing and co-ordinating national and international environmental programmes, research programmes and assessments; establishing science and environmental policies - specifically advising governments and civil society on the policy implications of scientific information and policy options for action; and communicating scientific, technical and economic information to policymakers. During the last twenty years Bob has received numerous national and international awards recognising his contributions to science and the science-policy interface, including in 2003 - Honorary "Companion of the Order of Saint Michael and Saint George" from the United Kingdom and in 2007 - the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on Climate Change, shared with Al Gore and other members of the IPCC.
Professor (Blanche) Marjorie Wilson
Marjorie Wilson is professor of Igneous Petrogenesis at the Institute of Geophysics, School of Earth and Environment and Pro-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds.
Marjorie studied geology at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, the University of California, Berkeley, USA, and Leeds University, and obtained a Master of Business Administration degree from the Open University. Her research is in the field of igneous petrology, volcanology and geodynamics. In addition to her academic research, she has worked extensively with the UK and international offshore oil industry.
Marjorie has served on a number of committees and international organisations including UNESCO, the European Science Foundation, Science Foundation Ireland and the European Commission. She currently advises the Italian Government on volcanic hazard prediction and in 2007 was a member of the Evaluation Committee for the Norwegian Research Council's Centres of Excellence Programme. Marjorie was a member of the NERC Science and Innovation Strategy Board (SISB) from November 2003 to July 2007.
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