Creating connections in Scotland

Dr Julie Maxton CBE is the Executive Director of the Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post. Before taking up her position at the Royal Society in 2011 Julie was Registrar at the University of Oxford, the first woman in 550 years in the role.

She is an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, a Bencher of the Middle Temple, a Freeman of the Goldsmith’s Company, and a Board member of Engineering UK, the Charities Aid Foundation, Haberdasher Aske’s School and of the International Advisory Board of the Blavatnik School of Governance at Oxford University.

Originally trained as a barrister at the Middle Temple, Julie combined a career as a practising lawyer with that of an academic, holding a number of senior academic positions, including those of Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of numerous articles concerned with trusts, equity, commercial and property law.

Rebekah has been Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s National Academy, since September 2017. Rebekah worked in academia for a number of years researching homelessness, rural poverty and social exclusion, before joining the Scottish Government in 2001 to pursue a more applied research career. She became a senior civil servant in 2008 in which capacity she served as Head of Rural and Environmental Science and Analysis and as Chief Researcher with responsibility for social research across Government before moving to policy in 2013 as Head of Higher Education and Science. Rebekah supported a number of strategic advances during her time in Government including: leading development of the first carbon accounting of a financial budget; instigating a climate change behaviours research programme and; establishing and then working with the Commission on Widening Access to support a more holistic approach to enhancing access to university to students from deprived backgrounds. Rebekah is a trustee of the Centre for Homelessness Impact and a member of the Board of Management of City of Glasgow College.

Chris van der Kuyl is one of Scotland’s leading entrepreneurs working across the technology, media, gaming and entertainment sectors.  Chris is most notably co-Founder and Chairman of multiple award-winning games developer 4J Studios, best known for developing Minecraft for Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo games consoles. He and fellow co-Founder Paddy Burns launched Chroma Ventures, the investment arm of 4J Studios, in 2021 to consolidate their diverse and growing portfolio of investments.

Chris is also Chairman of; Puny Astronaut who are bringing their first game to market; TVSquared, a fast-growing data analytics company; Broker Insights, a start-up insurtech company; and Parsley Box who provide cupboard stored ready meals. He sits on the boards of; Blippar, a technology company specialising in augmented reality (AR); aquaculture technology specialists Ace Aquatec, Stormcloud Games, and independent games development studio and ADV Holdings, developer and operator of Wild Shore water-based adventure sites. 

Alongside his commercial roles, he was the founding Chairman of Entrepreneurial Scotland and is currently a member of multiple advisory and local charity boards. Elected as one of the youngest Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, he has also been awarded honorary degrees from; the University of Dundee; Abertay University, the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Napier University and the University of Strathclyde. Chris was formally recognised for his contribution to technology in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2020, becoming a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE).

Sherry Coutu is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor who serves on the boards of companies, charities, and universities.

She is currently a non-executive Director of Pearson plc, London Stock Exchange plc, DCMS and Raspberry Pi Trading. Sherry has decades of experience chairing Remuneration Committees of FTSE plcs, acting as Senior Independent Director and Nominations Committee chair and serving on audit committees. Philanthropically, she supports Founders4Schools, Digital Boost, Raspberry Pi Foundation and Cancer Research UK.

Sherry has an MBA from Harvard, an MSc (with distinction) from the London School of Economics, and a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has been awarded Honourary PhDs from The University of Bristol, Manchester University and the Open University for her work in Education and the Economy.

She was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to entrepreneurship in the New Year's Honours List 2013.

Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne is the creator of the first fresh gluten free bread on the market and Founder of Genius Foods Ltd, the UK’s leading brand in fresh gluten and dairy free bakery products. She is an experienced Executive and Non Executive Board Director, Food Scientist and Ingredient Functionality Expert, Innovator of great tasting gluten and dairy free food, Author, Chef and Mother.

Lucinda is dedicated to helping people with dietary restrictions, enjoy a mainstream diet and lifestyle. She is committed to supporting scaling businesses, budding entrepreneurs, and finding sustainable, ground-breaking food solutions to improve public health and well-being. Lucinda is also passionate about the important role science plays in business growth and efficiency. Lucinda is also Royal Society Entrepreneur in Residence at Edinburgh University, Board Director of The Scale Up Institute, and on the Scotland Food and Drink Board.

Callum Murray is the CEO of Amiqus, an award-winning purpose driven company, helping people get to work on what matters, faster. Amiqus was founded in 2015 after Callum experienced the civil court process first-hand as a litigant and was motivated to help improve access to legal information and support. Amiqus was supported by the RSE Enterprise fellowship programme in 2016, since then, Amiqus' staff and client compliance platform is now trusted by hundreds of organisations across multiple sectors, is accredited and recommended by regulatory bodies across the UK and counts government and the NHS as clients.

Richard Boyd studied Engineering Science at Oxford in the late 80s with Professor Brian Bellhouse who not only founded Oxford's very successful Institute of Biomedical Engineering, but also the University’s most successful ever spinout, Powderject, which was sold for over £0.5bn. Richard’s career began in naval shipbuilding on the Clyde before an MBA at INSEAD led to management consulting specialised in helping large tech companies across Europe and the US to accelerate their R&D and top-line growth. Afterwards, inspired by Professor Bellhouse, he started consulting to Universities and technology spin-outs in Scotland while looking for opportunities to start a medtech business. In 2010 he co-founded VueKlar Cardiovascular with Professor Andreas Melzer at Dundee, which developed an imaging technology specifically for cardiovascular implants. They came close to exiting the business but ultimately it failed. Undeterred, in 2018 he co-founded Invizius with Dr Andy Herbert from Edinburgh University. They have just completed a £5.3m Series A investment round to get into the clinic in 2023 with their kidney dialysis product. 

Neil Martin is CEO and a founder of Vector Photonics, a producer of PCSEL-based surface emitting semiconductor lasers – acknowledged as the most significant innovation in laser design and manufacture for 30 years.

Vector Photonics is a spin out of the University of Glasgow. Its broad wavelength range PCSELs are low cost, robust, and high power – a combination of key characteristics which gives a huge advantage over current semiconductor laser technologies.

Neil led Vector Photonics to achieve a £1.6m equity investment, alongside government funding, taking its total seed funding round to over £4m.

Previously, Neil was CEO and founding member of CST Global, a compound semiconductor fab. This was another successful spin out of the University of Glasgow, which he exited to a Swedish quoted company in 2017.

Neil has held senior marketing and design roles in blue-chip, semiconductor companies. He has a background in design, international product management and marketing.

Biography not yet available

Mahnaz received a PhD on Advanced Brain-computer Interface from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore in 2013. From 2009 to 2013, she was also an attached researcher at the Institute for Infocomm Research, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. Thereafter, she moved to University College Dublin where she worked as a lecturer in Biomedical Engineering in 2013. From 2014 to 2015, Mahnaz worked as a research fellow in the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. Since September 2015, she has been a lecturer in the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of Sheffield.

Mahnaz’ expertise is in Brain-computer interface, neural signal processing, and their applications in monitoring and enhancing physical and mental health. She is the director of Physiological Signals and Systems Laboratory at University of Sheffield. Her work on neural interfaces has received high-profile media coverage, e.g. BBC Tech Tent, BBC Radio 4, Sky News, etc. She has published more than 50 highly cited papers in both engineering and neuroscience top-ranked journals and conferences. Since March 2018, she has been serving as an associate editor in IEEE transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering. She also co-edited a book on brain-computer interface in IET, and contributed in Royal Society Neural Interfaces Perspective, launched in September 2019.

Dame Anne Rafferty read Law at Sheffield which in 2005 awarded her an Ll.D, was called by Gray’s Inn and began pupillage in 1974. She became a QC in 1990 and a Recorder in 1991.  She is married to His Honour Brian John Barker CBE QC, the former Recorder of London, and has three daughters.

She was Head of Chambers at 4, Brick Court, (now 9, Bedford Row) 1994-2000.  At the Criminal Bar Association she sat on the Committee 1986-91, was Secretary 1989-91, *Vice-Chairman 1993-95, and *Chairman 1995-97. She was *Chairman of the Bar Conference 1992. She was the only barrister on the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice 1991-93. On the Pigot Committee 1988-89 she wrote the recommendation now reflected in video-recorded interviews and subsequently of the evidence (in advance of trial) of vulnerable witnesses.

She was *Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit 2003 – 2006.
She was a member of the Sentencing Council 2009-2012.
She was made a High Court Judge in 2000 and a Lord Justice of Appeal in 2011.
She was de facto *Chairman of the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee from 2012-17.
She became Chairman of the Judicial College in August 2014.
In November 2015 she was installed as *Chancellor of the University of Sheffield.
In 2017 she was appointed Vice Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission. 
* = first woman

Dr Julie Maxton CBE is the Executive Director of the Royal Society, the first woman in 350 years to hold the post. Before taking up her position at the Royal Society in 2011 Julie was Registrar at the University of Oxford, the first woman in 550 years in the role.

She is an Honorary Fellow of University College Oxford, a Bencher of the Middle Temple, a Freeman of the Goldsmith’s Company, and a Board member of Engineering UK, the Charities Aid Foundation, Haberdasher Aske’s School and of the International Advisory Board of the Blavatnik School of Governance at Oxford University.

Originally trained as a barrister at the Middle Temple, Julie combined a career as a practising lawyer with that of an academic, holding a number of senior academic positions, including those of Deputy Vice Chancellor, Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. She is the author of numerous articles concerned with trusts, equity, commercial and property law.

Professor Sarah Skerratt is Director of Programmes at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotland's learned society, where she heads up the Directorate comprising the national academy's research, international, enterprise, policy advice, public engagement, Fellowship and Young Academy teams. She also delivers to the 'Inclusive Public Service' workstream of the RSE's Post-Covid Futures Commission. Prior to this, Sarah was Director of Policy Engagement at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). For 30+ years, Sarah has researched the "darker side of rural", including rural poverty, domestic abuse and mental ill health. She has enhanced rural and national policies and made a difference in rural communities via robust data, particularly lived-experienced evidence. Sarah works with Scottish Government task forces, Scottish and UK Parliaments, universities, private, public and third sectors, communities and development agencies in Scotland and internationally. Sarah is Scientific Director of the Scottish Consortium for Rural Research (SCRR). She is on the Advisory Board of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), member of the International Network on Social Disadvantage in Rural Peripheries, member of the Scottish Advisory Group of the OECD Rural Innovation Programme, Partner in Scotland’s Social Action Inquiry, member of the Farming for 1.5 Independent Inquiry and a founding member of the National Rural Mental Health Forum.  

Professor Niamh Nic Daeid is a Chartered Chemist and authorised forensic scientist. She is a Professor of Forensic Science and Director of the Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science at the University of Dundee. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and holds fellowships of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Chartered Society of Forensic Science, the Institute of Chemistry of Ireland, the Royal Statistical Society and the UK Association of Fire Investigators. 

She has held leadership positions with the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) as a past chair of the fire and explosion investigation working group and as vice chair of the scientific advisory board of the International Criminal Court for 6 years.  She is a forensic expert advisor to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and is also vice chair of the Dundee Drugs Commission investigating drug related deaths in Dundee. 

Clement was called to the Bar in 1971, having read Law at Cambridge. After a general practice at the Junior Bar, he became a QC in 1993, specialising in heavy criminal cases and licensing law. He became a Circuit Judge in 2002, was authorised to sit at the Central Criminal Court [2006] and the Court of Appeal [Criminal Division] [2009], before being appointed a Senior Circuit Judge and Honorary Recorder of Liverpool in 2011, in which capacity he sat until his retirement in 2019. He received an Honorary Fellowship [Law] from Liverpool John Moores University in 2016, and was Autumn Reader of Middle Temple in 2020. In 2020, he was appointed by the Home Secretary to chair the Jermaine Baker Inquiry [into a fatal police shooting]. He considers it a great honour to have been asked to chair the Editorial Board which has overseen the authorship, and now the publication of the Primer on Ballistics.

Baroness Black is the Pro Vice Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University.  She is a forensic anthropologist, an anatomist and President of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the British Academy and a chartered forensic anthropologist.  She was awarded an OBE in 2001 for her services to forensic anthropology in Kosovo and a DBE in 2016 for her services to forensic anthropology and education.

Amanda was born and raised in Liverpool before studying law at Cambridge. She was called to the Bar in 1991, and returned to practise in Liverpool, developing a broad common law practice covering crime, family and civil cases before specialising in high value personal injury claims and clinical negligence work.   She became a QC in 2011.  Her practice at the Bar regularly involved detailed consideration of complex medical and scientific evidence.  

Amanda was appointed to the High Court Bench in October 2017.  She sits in the Queen’s Bench Division and tries serious criminal and civil cases. She is currently a Presiding Judge of the Northern Circuit and Director of Civil Training for the Judicial College.  She has enjoyed working on the Forensic Collision Investigation Primer which is nearing publication.

Dame Sue Ion FRS is Hon President of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear. She was previously Chairman of the UK Nuclear Innovation Research Advisory Board (NIRAB). She represents the UK on a number of international review and oversight committees for the nuclear sector including the Euratom Science and Technology Committee which she chaired until late 2018. She was the only non-US member of the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee on which she has served from 2005-2020.

Sue spent 27 years with British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) rising to the position of Chief Technology Officer in 1992, a post she held until 2006 when she assumed a number of mainly voluntary roles in Science and Engineering, including membership of the UK Council for Science and Technology and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). She was Vice President of the Royal Academy of Engineering 2002-2008 and chaired its MacRobert Committee 2013-2019. Sue was Deputy Chair of the Board of the University of Manchester until September 2018 and currently serves on the Board of the University of Central Lancashire.

Her core expertise is in materials science and engineering associated with the nuclear sector. Sue is a member of the Chief Scientific Advisor for Wales’s Science and Innovation Advisory Council. She has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Materials at Imperial College since 2006, holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Manchester and is now Chair of the Royal Society Science, Industry and Translation Committee.

Alicia Greated is the Chief Executive Officer for KTN.   

Previously Alicia was Global Director, Research Engagement at Heriot-Watt University and prior to that, led delivery of the Newton Fund (a £735million global research and innovation fund) on behalf of BEIS, UK government. 

She was also founder and Director of Research Council UK (RCUK) India at the British High Commission in Delhi, and Director RCUK China at the British Embassy in Beijing.  She has worked as acting Director of Research for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and was Head of Engineering at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Alicia is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the RSA and member of the UK Government’s Jet Zero Council.  She is also member of a number of advisory bodies including the Royal Society’s Science, Industry and Translation Committee and the Scottish Funding Council’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee.

Dr. Stefano Albrecht is Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, where he leads the Autonomous Agents Research Group (http://agents.inf.ed.ac.uk). He is a Royal Society Industry Fellow working with UK-based company FiveAI to research and develop AI technologies for autonomous vehicles.

Caroline Barelle is the CEO of Elasmogen, a Biotech company based in Aberdeen. She is an RSE Enterprise Fellow and RS Entrepreneur in Residence at Queen's University Belfast.

Roger Halliday is the Scottish Government's Chief Statistician. He started as Chief Statistician in November 2011 and worked as the Chief Data Officer in Scottish Government up to March 2020 when he took a role leading the Government’s Covid Analysis Team. 

He qualified with a degree in statistics in 1993 from St Andrews University and joined the Government fast stream as an assistant statistician. He worked for various UK Government Departments and at the Scottish Government in a number of statistical and policy making roles. He currently leads Research Data Scotland, which was established in 2020 to enable innovation in the public good through access and linkage of data around people, places and businesses.

Marian Scott is Professor of Environmental Statistics in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Glasgow; an elected member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) and a chartered statistician of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS). She is a member of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), a member of the EU Scientific Committee on Health, Environment and Emerging Risks (SCHEER) and a board member of the Isaac Newton Institute and was the vice president (International) of RSE 2016-2019. She is also a member of the board of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences (ICMS) and the newly formed NERC Advisory Network.

Marian’s research interests include model uncertainty and sensitivity analysis; modelling the dispersal of pollutants in the environment (including air and water quality), the science of measurement (specifically radiocarbon dating) and assessment of animal welfare. She was awarded an OBE in 2009 for services to science and won the Barnett award of the RSS in 2019.

Gillian Docherty is chief executive of The Data Lab, an innovation centre with a mission of maximising the value for Scotland from data. The Data Lab facilitates partnerships between industry and academia, supporting data science and artificial intelligence projects as well as funding and running first class, ground-breaking education programmes. Gillian is passionate about the opportunity for using Data to drive economic and social benefits. 

Formerly of IBM, Gillian is a visiting professor at Robert Gordon University, a TED speaker and was named Digital Leader 2018 for the UK. Gillian was named CEO of the year at the Digital Technology Awards 2017 and was also in the UK’s top ten most influential people in data according to DataIQ. Gillian is on the Board of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, a trustee of Beyonder Involve Charity and an Industry advisor to Previse. Gillian has a degree in Computing Science from the University of Glasgow, an Honorary Doctorate from Robert Gordon University and is married with a daughter.

David Kelly has been with the Scottish Council for Development and Industry (SCDI) – a ‘think-and-do tank’ representing a unique coalition of the private, public and third sectors – since 2018. He has been responsible for leading collaborative research projects and authoring major reports on climate change, technological disruption, public health and the future of work. He is currently working on a report in partnership with BT on the role digital technologies can play in achieving net zero.

David joined SCDI from Stirling Council, where he was Business Management and Improvement Officer with responsibility for the local authority’s Participatory Budgeting and Priority Based Budgeting programmes. Prior to that, he worked for the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights in New York City, and wrote for a multilingual, pan-European journal of politics, international relations and culture based in Hamburg. He studied Politics at the University of Edinburgh, receiving the School of Economics Prize, the Simon Gray Prize for International Relations and the Simon Gray Prize for Politics, before graduating with a first-class honours degree in 2016.