Dr Tom Barlow joined the Chief Scientist Office in 2014 as senior research manager covering a range of areas including population health, health services, and health data science research and some aspects of NRS infrastructure.  Prior to that Tom worked in the UK Government in a number of policy areas including: emerging healthcare technologies, immunisation, prion diseases, and chemical safety.  Before joining the civil service, Tom was a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, the United States National Cancer Institute, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. 

Professor Julie Brittenden is Director of Research, Development and Innovation for NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Director of the joint NHSGGG & Glasgow University Clinical Research Facilities; Professor of Vascular Surgery, College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences University of Glasgow and a Consultant Vascular Surgeon at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow. Professor Brittenden’s research interests include the role of screening and specific biomarkers of cardiac risk in patients with peripheral arterial disease; evaluating and imaging of unstable carotid plaques; and venous disease. She is a co-founder of the West of Scotland Innovation Hub, which support health and social care innovation projects across the West of Scotland and address key challenges to improve health, social care and service delivery. National roles include, membership of Innovation Design Authority; Life Sciences Scotland Industry Leadership Group, and Non-Executive member of Innoscot Health.

Professor Rory McCrimmon trained at the University of Edinburgh and completed his clinical and speciality training in the South-East of Scotland. In 2002, he joined the faculty at Yale University, USA, to investigate why people with type 1 are very prone to developing low glucose (Hypoglycaemia). He returned to Scotland in 2009 to establish his laboratory at the University of Dundee, where he is currently Dean of Medicine, Professor of Experimental Diabetes and Metabolism and Honorary Consultant. He was awarded the 2015 RD Lawrence Lecture and 2022 Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture by Diabetes UK for his research in Hypoglycaemia, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Rory has served on the Editorial Boards of Diabetologia, Diabetes, Diabetes Care and the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. He has been a panel member for Medical Research Council Population and Systems Medicine Board, Diabetes UK Clinical Studies Group Management Committee; Diabetes UK, Intermediate Clinical Fellowships Panel; Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Scientific Review Boards PEAK Programme; he is an executive member of the International Hypoglycaemia Study Group and a non-executive member of the NHS Tayside Health Board. He is currently also Lead Clinician for the Scottish Diabetes Research Network (Diabetes | NHS Research Scotland | NHS Research Scotland) which supports the setup and delivery of clinical and epidemiological research across Scotland. Epidemiological research is carried out using SCI-Diabetes (Scottish Care Information - Diabetes), which tracks real-time clinical information on all 300,000 people with type I and type II Diabetes in Scotland. The Diabetes Research Register is directly linked to Sci-Diabetes and has over 16,000 patients who have consented to be part of an electronic database of patients who have agreed to be contacted about research for which they are eligible.

Dr Alan McNair is Senior Research Manager within the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office. His remit covers CSO’s direct research funding, research infrastructure support and UK-wide collaborations. He has worked in research and latterly research management roles in a number of leading research institutions, including the Pasteur Institute, NUI Galway and the University of Lausanne.

Professor Zosia Miedzybrodzka is Professor of Medical Genetics, University of Aberdeen and Honorary Consultant Clinical Geneticist and Service Clinical Director- Genetics for NHS Grampian. Zosia Miedzybrodzka studied medicine and trained as a clinical researcher and specialist genetics doctor at University of Aberdeen and with the NHS Grampian in the North of Scotland. She uses the roles of service clinical director of NHS laboratory and clinical genetics in the north of Scotland, and honorary consultant clinical geneticist to deliver high quality impactful research in gene discovery, characterisation, clinical epidemiology and rigorous technology assessment. Her work is highly collaborative both locally, nationally and internationally and she has particular interests in evaluation of genomics, Huntington’s disease (HD) and prevention in hereditary cancer. As chair of the Scottish genetics laboratories’ consortium she led NHS Scotland from testing for small panels of genes to exomes, with widespread cancer testing and beginnings of pharmacogenomics in everyday clinical practice and she led the NHS Scotland in 100,000 genomes project.  Recently her work on a breast and ovarian cancer gene, BRCA1, in Orkney came to public attention, leading to Woman and Home Magazine celebrating her as “Britain’s most amazing woman- Science Pioneer” for 2023.

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh is Chair of Primary Care Research and Development, Director of the Usher Institute and Dean of Data at the University of Edinburgh. He is also Director of the 17 university Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research (AUKCAR) and co-leads Health Data Research UK’s national Driver Programme on Inflammation and Immunity. 

He was previously a Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy and Practice and Visiting Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

He is an editorial board member of BMC Medicine, Health Informatics Journal, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Medical Care and PLOS Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Quality in Health Care. He has played important advisory roles to a number of governments, inter-governmental bodies including the World Bank, World Health Organization and the World Innovation Summit for Health, and leading scientific bodies including the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society.

He is a fellow of nine learned societies and has been awarded numerous UK and international awards for his work.

Aziz was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for ‘Services to Medicine and Health Care’ in 2014 and a Knight Bachelor in 2022 for ‘Services to COVID-19 Research and Policy’.