Science as a global public good? From the right to participate in science to science governance

Luke Drury is a theoretical astrophysicist working mainly in the area of high-energy astrophysics, but with broad interests in computational methods, plasma physics and gas dynamics. He was President of the RIA 2011-2014. For full details see: orcid.org/0000-0002-9257-2270.

Adrian Bird graduated in Biochemistry from the University of Sussex in 1968 and obtained his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. Following postdoctoral experience at the Universities of Yale and Zurich, he joined the Medical Research Council’s Mammalian Genome Unit in Edinburgh. In 1987, he moved to Vienna to become a Senior Scientist at the newly-founded Institute for Molecular Pathology. He was a governor of Wellcome from 2000-2010, a trustee of Cancer Research UK from 2010-2016 and received a knighthood in 2014.

He is currently chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Francis Crick Institute and is Deputy Director of SIDB. Adrian is based in the Centre for Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh, where he holds the Buchanan Chair of Genetics. Awards include the Shaw Prize (2016) and the Brain Prize (2020).

Adrian’s research focuses on the basic biology and biomedical significance of chromatin proteins that are frequently mutated in autism spectrum disorders.

Amos Storkey is Professor of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. He co-leads the Bayesian and Neural Systems Group in Edinburgh, with a longstanding focus on understanding and developing fundamental machine learning and AI capability, along with furthering the use of machine learning in science and medicine. He is a fellow of the ELLIS Society and has served as director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Science. He is current director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Machine Learning Systems. He is a strong proponent for Open Science, and for considering the value of scientific research beyond the immediate economic case and the vested interests of large corporate entities.

Fiona Marshall is President of Novartis Biomedical Research where she leads approximately 5,500 scientists and other associates across nine research sites dedicated to the discovery of high-value medicines for patients.

Prior to taking up her current role in November 2022, Fiona served as senior vice president and global head of discovery sciences, preclinical development and translational medicine at MSD. Fiona holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from University of Bath and a doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Cambridge, both in the UK. She was the recipient of the 2012 WISE Women of Outstanding Achievement for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award, the 2015 RSC Malcolm Campbell Award for Chemistry, and the Vane Medal from the British Pharmacological Society. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society and the Academy of Medical Sciences, and an honorary fellow of both the British Pharmacological Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

After an Engineering degree Warren spent 30 years in the semiconductor industry becoming CEO at ARM in 2001 until 2013. He was appointed CEO at Rolls-Royce in 2015 with a mission to modernise. He stepped down at the end of 2022, leaving Rolls-Royce with significantly increased capacity and platform for enhanced profitability and cash as the sector recovered post-Covid19, together with a clear path to decarbonisation of the product portfolio. Since 2007 he has served on the boards of several major engineering and technology companies, including De La Rue, BT, Dyson and Micron. Currently he is a non-executive director at ITM Power plc; ASML NV; Tokamak Energy Ltd., and Chair of NATS. He is currently past President of the IET. He received a CBE in 2014 and a Knighthood in 2025.

Sir Nigel is currently Chair of the UK Committee on Radioactive Waste Management. He one of the world’s leading human geographers and social scientists. His research spans a broad range of interests including international finance and financial exclusion; cities in their many guises; so-called non-representational theory; repair and maintenance, affective politics; the history of timekeeping and; universities. He was made a Fellow of the British Academy in 2003. He has been a university manager including Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick and before that Head of Division and then Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at Oxford University.

Dr Osarenkhoe Ogbeide is a Royal Society Career Development Fellow based at the University of Cambridge and an Early Career Research Fellow at Churchill College. Based in the Department of Engineering, he leads internationally recognised research on advanced nanoengineered gas sensing technologies with applications spanning indoor air quality, agriculture, healthcare and environmental monitoring. Dr Ogbeide’s research focuses on the development of highly sensitive, low power gas sensors that combine functionalised graphene, metal oxides and intelligent data analysis to detect harmful airborne pollutants at low concentrations. His work aims to address one of the most pressing global health challenges by enabling affordable, scalable and accurate monitoring of indoor air pollution. He completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he developed a first-of-its-kind predictive gas sensing platform capable of distinguishing multiple gases in complex real world environments. This research helped establish new approaches to chemical sensing by integrating nanomaterials engineering with machine learning techniques.

In recognition of his scientific excellence and leadership potential, Dr Ogbeide was awarded a prestigious Royal Society Career Development Fellowship, one of the most competitive early career awards in the United Kingdom. The fellowship supports his independent research programme translating fundamental nanoscience into technologies with tangible societal and commercial impact.

Beyond his academic work, Dr Ogbeide is a passionate advocate for equality, diversity and inclusion in science and engineering, contributing to national conversations on access, representation and policy. He is also an accomplished science communicator and illustrator, using visual storytelling to engage wider audiences and inspire the next generation of researchers and innovators.

Zeynep Pamuk is Associate Professor in Contemporary Political Theory and Professorial Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Before joining Oxford, she was assistant professor in the Department of Government at the London School of Economics and the Department of Political Science, University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Politics and Expertise: How to Use Science in a Democratic Society (Princeton, 2021), which has received the American Political Science Association's Foundations of Political Theory Section First Book Award. She holds a PhD in political science from Harvard and a BA in ethics, politics & economics from Yale.

Gabi Hegerl is a climate scientist who focuses on identifying the drivers and mechanisms of observed climate change. This work provides a critical underpinning to predictions of future changes.

Gabi published some of the first studies determining that recent warming is statistically different from climate variability, and pioneered a method that distinguishes between possible causes for climate change, such as greenhouse gas increases or changes in the sun. She has also made important contributions to estimating climate sensitivity, and to determining the causes of changing characteristics of extreme weather events. Gabi's recent work has shown that human influences have changed global precipitation patterns, sharpening the contrast between wet and dry regions, while volcanic eruptions show an opposite effect.

Gabi has had key roles in scientific assessments of climate change (IPCC), and is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She received a Royal Society Wolfson Merit award, the Hans Sigrist Prize awarded by Bern University (2016) and the Achievement Award of the International Meeting on Statistical Climatology.

Ed is a co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Xyme – an AI startup in the field of enzyme design which he has now helped to grow to over 30 people working across AI method development, computational science and engineering, and experimental disciplines. Previously, he was Head of Research Innovation at IBM UK and Ireland, providing leadership on the convergence of HPC, AI and Quantum Computing to accelerate scientific discovery.

He is interested in the use of powerful emerging technologies to help to answer some of the biggest scientific challenges of our time. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge, and then moved to Harvard University, finally leaving to help start the IBM Research Lab in the UK in 2015. In 2018 he became one of the youngest people to hold an honorary professorship at the University of Liverpool and in 2019 became Editor in Chief of the Wiley journal Applied AI Letters. In 2025 he was made a Bye-Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. He has authored more than 90 papers and conference proceedings, filed multiple patents, and written a popular textbook on the use of AI for physical science, published by Wiley in 2021.

Ed was elected to the UK Young Academy in 2023, and was appointed to the Executive Group as co-chair of the UK Young Academy in the same year – a position to which he was recently re-elected. In 2024, Ed was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), one of the most prestigious awards the Society confers.

Dr Vincent completed her PhD studying mitochondrial disease at Newcastle University under the supervision of Sir Professor Doug Turnbull. Throughout her PhD she was exposed to scientific research on mitochondrial donation and the public engagement, charity partnerships and lobbying that went along with this to ultimately change the law. In 2019 she received a Henry Wellcome Fellowship, which allowed her to establish her research group and subsequently lead to her being made an Academic Track Fellow at Newcastle University. Her research looks to understand the mechanism by which mtDNA mutations accumulate and cause disease. She joined the UK Young Academy in 2023 as part of the first cohort of members and has been on the Executive group since shortly after this. Amy is interested in the role of scientific research in education, combating misinformation and disinformation, policy and public engagement. She is also passionate about the how we support early career researchers and EDI. These interests have driven the work and roles she has engaged with through the UK Young Academy more broadly.

The Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS is the President of the Resolution Foundation. He is Chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office and of the UK Space Agency. He is Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology and a visiting professor at King’s College, London. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit. Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book “A University Education” is published by Oxford University Press. A second edition of his book “The Pinch” on fairness between the generations was published in 2019.

Robbert Dijkgraaf FRS is a distinguished mathematical physicist and academic leader who served as Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam and the President-Elect of the International Science Council, representing the global science community. Before that he led the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dijkgraaf’s research focuses on the interface between theoretical physics and mathematics where he contributed to the understanding of string theory, black holes and topological field theories. He served as president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the InterAcademy Partnership, the global alliance of science academies.

He has received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, and has been named a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He is also a trained artist, popular lecturer, columnist and writer.

Professor Nicole Grobert is Professor of Nanomaterials at the Department of Materials, University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College. Her research focuses on the controlled manufacturing, processing, and characterisation of advanced nanomaterials, including carbon and non carbon nanostructures engineered for applications in healthcare, energy systems, and materials operating in extreme environments.

From 2018 to 2025, she served as a Chief Scientific Advisor to the European Commission, chairing the Group of Chief Scientific Advisors from 2020.  Professor Grobert has a long standing commitment to public engagement with science, e.g., she was a Trustee of the Vega Science Trust and in 2025 she joined the board of Trustees of Sense about Science promoting evidence informed dialogue and accessible scientific communication. She is also a founding member and former Chair of the Young Academy of Europe, and the founding member and Chair of the Oxford Advanced Materials Network bringing together academia from across the disciplines, industry and policymakers.

Professor Grobert is a vocal advocate for blue skies research and a contributor to the 2030 Manifesto for Europe’s Research Future, championing scientific freedom, interdisciplinary excellence, and Europe’s capacity for transformative discovery.

Dr Heide Hackmann joined the University of Stellenbosch on 1 July 2024, as a Chair in Science Futures within the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology. She holds an MPhil in Contemporary Social Theory from the University of Cambridge in the UK and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Maria Leptin is a developmental biologist and geneticist who is the President of the European Research Council (ERC). After her studies in mathematics and biology, Maria Leptin carried out her PhD research at the Basel Institute for Immunology. She then moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, became a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, and professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne. Before her appointment as ERC President, Leptin was the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Heidelberg and a research group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. She is an elected member of numerous scientific academies and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Geoffrey Boulton OBE FRSE MAE FRS is Regius Professor of Geology Emeritus at Edinburgh University, distinguished for his research in glaciology. He has been a member of the UK Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology, chaired the Royal Society’s Science Policy Centre and several of its science reports, including Science as an Open Enterprise. He has been President of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) and is a member of the Governing Board of the International Science Council for which he authored its position paper on Science as a Global Public Good.

The Rt Hon Lord Willetts FRS is the President of the Resolution Foundation. He is Chair of the Regulatory Innovation Office and of the UK Space Agency. He is Chair of the Foundation for Science and Technology and a visiting professor at King’s College, London. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the No. 10 Policy Unit. Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book “A University Education” is published by Oxford University Press. A second edition of his book “The Pinch” on fairness between the generations was published in 2019.

Robbert Dijkgraaf FRS is a distinguished mathematical physicist and academic leader who served as Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands. He is currently a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Amsterdam and the President-Elect of the International Science Council, representing the global science community. Before that he led the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Dijkgraaf’s research focuses on the interface between theoretical physics and mathematics where he contributed to the understanding of string theory, black holes and topological field theories. He served as president of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the InterAcademy Partnership, the global alliance of science academies.

He has received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, and has been named a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He is also a trained artist, popular lecturer, columnist and writer.

Dr Heide Hackmann joined the University of Stellenbosch on 1 July 2024, as a Chair in Science Futures within the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology. She holds an MPhil in Contemporary Social Theory from the University of Cambridge in the UK and a PhD in Science and Technology Studies from the University of Twente in the Netherlands.

Maria Leptin is a developmental biologist and geneticist who is the President of the European Research Council (ERC). After her studies in mathematics and biology, Maria Leptin carried out her PhD research at the Basel Institute for Immunology. She then moved to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, became a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, and professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne. Before her appointment as ERC President, Leptin was the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in Heidelberg and a research group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory. She is an elected member of numerous scientific academies and an Honorary Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences.