Diversity Conference 2018: Achieving diverse leadership in a research environment

Jacky Wright

A transformational global leader and innovative technologist, Jacky is a passionate ambassador for women and BAME in technology.

In late 2017, she became Chief Digital and Information Officer for HMRC, where she is responsible for driving one of the largest digitally-enabled transformations in Europe.

Jacky’s influence and interests extend to promoting the digital transformation of public services in the widest sense, as well as a number of social issues.

Jacky is patron of techUK's Public Services Board (PSB), which champions opportunities for the UK tech industry to collaborate across government. She is partnering with techUK and other organisations to address social mobility by providing access to digital skills training for all.

A senior BAME Civil Service leader, HMRC's Disability Champion and a member of the Civil Service Diverse Leadership Task Force, Jacky champions diversity across government and provides advice on the Civil Service’s strategy for improving BAME and disabled representation at all levels.

Jacky sits on various boards, including City, University of London, the Institute of Coding and YearUp, and works to promote equal opportunities and access to education for all. She has an honorary doctorate from Aston University, and has received many prestigious industry awards.

Amanda Aldercotte, Advance HE

Dr Amanda Aldercotte, Head of Knowledge and Research, Advance HE. After completing her PhD in Psychology at the University of Cambridge, Amanda joined Advance HE’s research team in August 2016 and began managing the team in November 2017. She leads the production of Advance HE’s annual statistical reports, providing the sector with national demographics of the UK’s staff and student populations. She authored a series of reports on the experiences and perceptions of gender equality among STEMM academics as lead research on the national Athena Survey of Science, Engineering and Technology (ASSET) 2016. Recently, Amanda co-produced a brief report on the gender pay gap in English higher education institutions examining the most common factors underpinning these gaps and how the gender pay gap relates to an institution’s size, mission group and Athena SWAN participation. A second report on the gender pay gap exploring the actions institutions are taking to mitigate the gender pay gap is due for publication September 2018.

Professor Carole Mundell, University of Bath

Carole Mundell is Professor of Extragalactic Astronomy and Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Bath. An observational astrophysicist, she exploits international ground- and space-based facilities across the electromagnetic spectrum to study cosmic black holes and their environments. Her team specializes in developing and using novel technology on autonomous robotic telescopes to catch the fast-fading light from powerful but unpredictable cosmic explosions such as Gamma Ray Bursts. Using this technology, Carole's team discovered the first direct evidence of large-scale ordered magnetic fields in plasma ejected at speeds close to that of light by a newly formed, distant black hole system.

Carole has held prestigious fellowships including a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award for the study of black-hole driven explosions and the dynamic Universe and in 2016, she was named FDM Everywoman in Technology Woman of the Year.  With the wealth of new astronomical facilities planned to come online in the coming decade, she is particularly interested in the engineering, mathematical and computing challenges of real-time, autonomous and interpretive systems in the era of 'big data'.

Image: © IDPS, University of Bath

Professor Lesley Yellowlees

Lesley Yellowlees CBE FRSE, HonFRSC, recently retired as Vice Principal and Head of the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh. She has worked with the Royal Society of Chemistry for many years and became their first female President in July 2012.

She is a champion for the promotion of women in science and in 2011 was honoured by the IUPAC as a Distinguished Woman in Chemistry for her scientific contributions to the global chemistry community. Her research interests include inorganic electrochemistry and spectroelectrochemistry, EPR spectroscopy, solar energy and CO2 conversion. Her other interests include the public engagement of science.

She was awarded an MBE in 2005 for services to science and a CBE in 2014 for services to chemistry. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012 and an Honorary FRSC in 2016. She has honorary degrees from Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh Napier, Heriot-Watt, Huddersfield, The Open, Queen’s and Strathclyde Universities. Lesley is married to Peter and they have two children, Sarah and Mark and two grandchildren Finn and Molly.

Professor Tom Welton, Imperial College London

Professor Tom Welton is Dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences at Imperial College London and Professor of Sustainable Chemistry. He was Head of the Chemistry Department from August 2007 to December 2014, during which time the Department achieved an Athena Swan Gold Award for efforts in promoting women in science. He became Dean of the Faculty in January 2015.

Tom works with ionic liquids in order to develop sustainable solvent technologies. He is the author of over 100 papers, primarily on the structures and chemistry of ionic liquids and their solutes.

Tom lives in London with his husband Mike.

Professor Michelle Ryan

Michelle Ryan is a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter, UK, and a part-time Professor of Diversity at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She currently holds a European Research Council Consolidator Grant examining the way in which context and identity shape and constrain women's career choices (with Thekla Morgenroth, Chris Begeney, and Renata Bongiorno). With Alex Haslam, she has uncovered the phenomenon of the glass cliff, whereby women (and members of other minority groups) are more likely to be placed in leadership positions which are risky or precarious. The term 'glass cliff' was short listed for Word of the Year by the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016 and was named by the New York Times as one of the ideas that shaped 2008. Michelle lives in an old train station in rural Devon.

Faye Banks, Costain Group

With a long and esteemed professional career within Engineering, I am absolutely passionate about furthering what engineering provides for this country and the wider international engineering community. I have been a STEM ambassador and absolutely committed to help raise the profile of Engineering over two decades in industry. Having left school with no qualifications after a troubled childhood, I was absolutely fascinated with STEM, and decided to re-educate myself, gaining an apprenticeship, and then progressing through a variety of industries including manufacturing, water, electrical transmission and distribution.

During that journey, I started continual education, eventually earning 4 Master’s degrees amongst many other qualifications. My focus and drive towards engineering has been absolute. While I have not sought recognition, I won the prestigious title of UK Young Woman Engineer of the Year in 2004, was named in the Telegraph's Top 50 female Engineers, Open University Alumni of the Year 2018 and English Women’s award for services to Science and Engineering 2018.

Now as Director of Energy for Costain, I am proof that with that with the right drive, and support  anyone can progress a successful life in STEM.

Dr Elin McCormack, The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

Elin is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council). Her research involves detecting and analysing the spectroscopic signatures of gaseous molecules in our atmosphere. These types of measurement allow more detailed understanding of atmospheric phenomena and can provide valuable inputs into forecasting models for weather patterns.

She combines a career managing advanced research projects with bringing up two young children.

Dr Shakir Mohamed, DeepMind

Shakir Mohamed is a staff research scientist at DeepMind in London. Shakir's research is in the areas of statistical machine learning and artificial intelligence. His work focuses on the interface between probabilistic reasoning, deep learning and reinforcement learning, and how the solutions that emerge at that intersection can be used to develop general-purpose learning systems and in addressing global challenges.

At DeepMind, Shakir is a member of its diversity steering committee, and leads its LGBT+ employee resource group. Shakir also leads the Deep Learning Indaba, an independent grassroots organisation whose aim is to build pan-African capacity and ownership in AI: by building communities, creating leadership and recognising excellence in AI across the African continent. Shakir also sits on the diversity advisory board for the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems - the leading conference in the field of machine learning and AI.

Shakir has been at DeepMind since 2013. Prior to joining DeepMind, he held a Junior Research Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) as part of the programme on Neural Computation and Adaptive Perception. Shakir holds a PhD in Statistical Machine Learning from the University of Cambridge. He is from Johannesburg, South Africa, where he completed his undergraduate and masters degrees in electrical and information engineering.

Professor Paul Upchurch, University College London

Dame Anne Rafferty

Former High Court Judge of the United Kingdom

Dame Anne Rafferty DBE retired from the Court of Appeal of England and Wales in July 2020.

She was called to the Bar in 1973, practiced in criminal law, took Silk (made a QC) in 1990 and was elected a Bencher of Gray’s Inn in 1998. She was appointed a Recorder in 1991, a Deputy High Court Judge in 1996 and a Judge of the High Court (Queens Bench Division) in 2000.

Dame Anne was the Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit between 2003 and 2006, was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal and made a Privy Counsellor in 2011. She was Vice Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission from 2017-2020 and she chaired the Judicial College from 2014 to 2020.

She now chairs the Royal Society’s steering committee on judicial primers, part of the Science and the law programme.

She is also a member of the King’s Counsel Appointments panel (applications for Silk), is a member of the Judicial Appointments Commission’s outreach scheme to encourage appointments to the judiciary which embrace diversity and is the Inspector of the Iraq Fatality Investigations. She has been Chancellor of the University of Sheffield since 2015.