Petra is a Professor of Public Health at Glasgow University (MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit). 

Petra co-directs SIPHER alongside Robin Purshouse. She is also the Lead for WS8, our Evaluation workstrand, which uses ongoing multi-perspective process evaluation to evaluate SIPHER’s scientific contribution and real-world impact.

Corinna is a Reader in Computational Modelling at Glasgow University (MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit). Corinna is interested in methodological and epistemological aspects of novel methods, in particular computational methods such as agent-based modelling and social simulation, and has published on aspects of ontology, explanatory power and context validity in modelling. As a computational modeller she has developed models of dynamic social networks of juvenile delinquency, neighbourhood effects of extortion racketeering and collective reasoning in social dilemma situations. She is particularly interested in complexity sensitive social science methods, comprising computational, case based and participatory methods. As a co-investigator in the Centre for Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN) she is involved with developing these methods in a policy relevant way. She is currently working on how to combine methods through novel research designs.

Corinna has taken on the role of SIPHER Co-Director in September 2021, alongside Petra Meier and Julian Cox.

Julian is Head of Research at the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). The GMCA research team supports policy makers across a broad range of thematic areas – including health, housing, the economy, crime, social services, employment and skills, and the environment – by providing data, evidence and insight to support decision-making. Julian also leads GMCA’s work on cost benefit analysis, helping commissioners maximise the value for money of the investment in public services.

Julian is SIPHER Co-Director and our GMCA Policy Partner Lead, working alongside Jess Smith, Mary Gogarty and Katrina Hann in our GMCA Policy Partner team.

Aki is a Professor of Health Economics with a joint appointment between the Department of Economics and the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include valuing health and wellbeing; incorporating equity concerns into social welfare functions; and normative economics of health and beyond.

Aki is the Lead for SIPHER Workstrand 6, Societal Valuation, which provides insight into how people value different policy outcomes and translates the multiplicity of outcomes that arise from a whole-systems perspective into two common well-being measures needed for economic evaluation.

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Alan is Professor of Health Economics and Decision Modelling at the University of Sheffield. Alan leads a large group of around 35 academic staff, undertaking methodological and applied research and consultancy using mathematical modelling in public health and healthcare.

Alan is a Co-Investigator on SIPHER Workstrands 3, 4, 5 and 7.

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Alison is a Professor in Geocomputation at the University of Glasgow. Her research involves developing tools from machine learning and artificial intelligence for solving complex spatial problems. A particular focus of her work is the development of individual-based models. Alison holds an ESRC-Turing Fellowship, where she is developing work ranging from anomaly detection, handling uncertainty in simulations and casual inference modelling.

Alison co-leads Workstrands 3 and 5 of SIPHER with Nik Lomax. WS3, Data & System Monitoring, builds a secure data infrastructure, creates detailed simulated populations and develops a system monitoring function to inform adaptive policymaking. WS5, Policy Microsimulation, models the impacts of environment and policy on the characteristics of individuals and households, showing how policy impacts differ across geographic areas and societal groups.

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Anna is a final-year PhD candidate in applied-microeconomics and a research assistant in the Department of Economics at the University of Sheffield. Her PhD thesis focuses on “Measuring well-being through equivalent income over the life course". Her research interests include valuing health and well-being, well-being measures and individual preferences.

Anna contributes to Workstrand 6 of SIPHER. Her PhD is supervised by Workstream 6 Lead Aki Tsuchiya and Bert van Landeghem.

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Anna is a Public Health Registrar currently on a part-time placement with SCHARR at the University of Sheffield. During this placement she is predominantly working as part of the SIPHER team leading some work on a causal review regarding aggregate economic activity & health outcomes.

Anna's current research interests are social justice and the connections with human and planetary health.

Alongside working at SIPHER, Anna is continuing to support the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic at the Yorkshire & Humber health protection team and doing a placement at Barnsley Hospital focused on their role as an anchor institution.

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Anne is a PhD student in the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Centre for Public Health Economics and Decision Science at the University of Sheffield. Her PhD project is supervised by Professor Robin Purshouse and Professor Petra Meier. Anne plans to investigate how SIPHER can help policy organisations to produce their own complex systems models and integrate them into their decision-making processes.

With degrees in Statistics, Computer Science and Population Health Evidence, Anne has worked mainly in Policy Research and Public Health Intelligence roles in local government.

Asif Ishaq is a Policy Lead in the Scottish Government’s Public Health Policy Team. Having led the development of Scotland’s first ever set of Public Health Priorities, in partnership with local government, he is now supporting the wider public and third sectors, and local communities, to adopt and implement the public health priorities in order to improve the health of the population.

Asif is our Scottish Government Policy Partner Lead, working alongside Rachel Anderson and Neil White in our Scottish Government Policy Partner team.

Chris graduated from King's College London with a BA, MSc and PhD in Geography. Following his academic studies he worked at the Peak District National Park Authority before beginning a career in Public Health in 2008 at Bradford and Airedale PCT. In 2010 he completed his PGDipPH at The University of Sheffield. In 2011 Chris joined the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) where he worked for six years, firstly on the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme modelling the uptake of NICE approved technologies, and then as a health economist in the NICE Clinical Guidelines team. In 2017 Chris moved back into public health, and is now Public Health Principal (Healthcare Public Health) in the Director of Public Health Office. Outside of work Chris is an advocate for strength sports and competes in powerlifting.

Chris works alongside Greg Fell and Daniel Chedgzoy in our Sheffield City Council Policy Partner team.

Clare is a Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University. Her research examines the social, political and economic determinants of health inequalities. She is a Senior Investigator in: CHAIN: Centre for Global Health Inequalities Research; Fuse: Centre for Translational Research in Public Health; and the NIHR School for Public Health Research. She works regularly with policy and practice organisations including Public Health England, Eurohealthnet and WHO Europe.

Clare is a SIPHER Health Inequalities Expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to guide and support our focus on Health Inequalities.

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Colin is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on modelling and understanding the impacts of public health policies on behaviour and health and how these impacts vary across different population groups. He also uses quantitative approaches to analyse a wide range of data to explore and visualise patterns and trends in health and health-related behaviours with a particular focus on the determinants and outcomes of health inequalities.

Colin is a SIPHER data visualisation expert with expertise in demographic and socioeconomic inequalities in the UK. He will work across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to exchange information and ideas around the best data sets to be using for Inclusive Economies.

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Craig is Professor of Planning and Housing in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield and Research Director of CaCHE (the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence) – a multi-institution initiative funded by ESRC, AHRC and Joseph Rowntree that seeks to work with the private, public and third sector in developing a systemic approach to addressing the UK’s housing challenges. Craig’s research focuses on the structure and behaviour of the housing system and in exploring the relationship between public policy and housing markets.

Craig is a SIPHER Housing Expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to shape and support our work in Housing.

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Dan works in the Performance and Intelligence Team at Sheffield City Council. He has been involved in various projects including the analysis of the 2019 Indices of Deprivation data for Sheffield. He completed a BA in English Literature & History at the University of Sheffield in 2005. From 2006-18 he worked in a number of roles in Children and Young People’s Services at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, with the majority of his work involving the collection, processing and analysis of data relating to education and children’s social care. In 2010-12 he completed an MSc in Social & Spatial Inequalities in the Department of Geography at Sheffield.

As a Sheffield City Council Embedded Researcher, Dan works across all 8 workstrands of SIPHER to shape our understanding of evolving policy priorities and to co-produce our models, tools and outputs. He works alongside Greg Fell and Chris Gibbons in the Sheffield City Council Policy Partner team.

Duncan Chambers is a Research Fellow in public health at ScHARR, University of Sheffield. He has 15 years experience of working in evidence synthesis, including systematic reviews, rapid reviews and health technology assessment.

Duncan co-leads Workstrand 2, Evidence Synthesis, which develops and applies iterative literature search and review strategies that are suitable for supporting complex systems modelling. He works alongside Fiona Campbell, Mark Clowes and Ruth Wong.

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Ellen is a Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde. She is a social scientist working at the intersection of medical sociology, health policy and public administration. Her research explores how health systems accommodate and negotiate different forms of ‘lay’ and ‘expert’ knowledge, including demands for public engagement and for evidence-based policy. In past projects she has explored everyday practices of public involvement in the local NHS, new governance arrangements for Scottish Health Boards, how health policymakers use research evidence, and hospital closures as an example of contentious healthcare transformation. Ellen is also Associate Lead for research on public engagement in the Wellcome Trust-funded Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society.

Ellen leads SIPHER's public engagement work, using Lived Experience Panels in Sheffield, Manchester and in Scotland to explore with local people our progress as a research consortium and the tools that we are developing.

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Fiona co-leads Workstrand 2, Evidence Synthesis, which develops and applies iterative literature search and review strategies that are suitable for supporting complex systems modelling. She works alongside Duncan Chambers, Mark Clowes and Ruth Wong.

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Fraser is the SIPHER Embedded Researcher at Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), and a Lead Analyst in the Population Health Research Team. He arrived at the organisation in January 2020 working as a Lead Analyst for Reform namely focussing on the refresh of the Greater Manchester Strategy alongside a wide range of other projects on topics including the Coronavirus response and HIV.

Fraser has a background of research in theory and policy alike, he holds a PhD in Human Geography at the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) at Newcastle University. While, in a policy sense he worked in Scottish Local Government and in the Private Transport sector having arrived in Greater Manchester in late 2017.

As the GMCA Embedded Researcher, Fraser works across all eight workstrands of SIPHER to help to shape our understanding of evolving policy priorities and to co-produce our models, tools and outputs. Fraser works alongside Julian Cox, Jess Smith and Katrina Hann in the GMCA Policy Partner team as well as liaising with a wide range of stakeholders both internal and external to the Combined Authority.

Gerry McCartney graduated from medicine at the University of Glasgow and did his GP vocational training in Paisley. Whilst working as a junior doctor he completed an honours degree in Economics and Development at the University of London. After this he entered the Public health training scheme, based initially at NHS Argyll and Clyde and then at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. During this time he worked on the 2007 E.coli outbreak in Paisley, performed needs assessments for communities in the east end of Glasgow and did his MD at the MRC Social and Public Health Sciences Unit (SPHSU) on the impacts of the Commonwealth Games. He also worked at the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (GCPH) where he produced the first synthesis of the causes of the excess mortality in Scotland and Glasgow. In 2010 he took up post as Head of the Scottish Public Health Observatory (ScotPHO) at NHS Health Scotland and then Public Health Scotland. In September 2021 he took up post as Professor of Wellbeing Economy at the University of Glasgow.

Gerry is a SIPHER Wellbeing Economy expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands.

Greg is Director of Public Health in Sheffield. He graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in biochemistry and physiology in 1993. He has worked as a social researcher in a maternity unit and held a number of roles in health promotion and public health before joining the public health training scheme. Greg worked as a consultant in public health in Bradford , then Bradford council. In 2016 he was appointed Director of Public Health in Sheffield.

Greg is our Sheffield City Council Policy Partner Lead, working alongside Chris Gibbons and Daniel Chedgzoy in our Sheffield City Council Policy Partner team.

Jen is a PhD student in the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Centre for Public Health, Economics and Decision Science at the University of Sheffield. Her PhD project supervised by Professor Robin Purshouse and Professor John Holmes is investigating the causal mechanisms of the Alcohol Harm Paradox. Jen plans to use theory driven system dynamic models to test whether theories of health inequality can explain the paradox.

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Jenny is a Research and Knowledge Transfer Practitioner for SIPHER, based at the University of Sheffield and working with Sheffield City Council and the NIHR CRN. With a background in life science previously, she has worked in a technology transfer start-up and for a national digital inclusion charity. In her role, she provides research support across the consortium, with a focus on evidence needs and research awareness.

Jess is Principal Researcher for Population Health within the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) Research Team. Jess manages a team of analysts that work across GMCA and the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership (GMHSCP) to provide insight into the health of the Greater Manchester population. The team also works with the GMHSCP’s population health programmes, advising on data collection, reporting, analysis, and evaluation. Jess also leads a programme of work that seeks to create a unified system of public health analysts within Greater Manchester. Previously, Jess has worked in research and analysis-related roles within healthcare regulation, the fire and rescue service, an independent research organisation, and with academia. Jess is a Fellow of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and an External Research Associate for the General Medical Council.

Jess works alongside Julian Cox, Mary Gogarty and Katrina Hann in our GMCA Policy Partner team.

John is a  Professor of Health Economics in the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) at the University of Sheffield. John has over 25 years’ experience of conducting economic evaluations of health care interventions for policy makers. John was the inaugural Director of the Economic Evaluation Policy Research Unit (EEPRU) which is a joint Sheffield and York Unit funded by the Department of Health in England to undertake applied and methodological research to inform health policy in England.

John is a Co-Investigator on Workstrand 6, which is focused on Societal Valuations of Cross-Sectoral Outcomes and Equity Implications.

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Kat is a Professor of Public Health Policy at Strathclyde University, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh, where she is an active member of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy at Edinburgh (SKAPE). Kat employs qualitative methods to study the interplay between public health research and policy, to analyse public policies and policy influence, and to study public perspectives on health inequalities.

Kat leads SIPHER Workstrand 1, Understanding Policy Processes & Evidence Needs, which uses a novel combination of qualitative methods including interviews, system mapping, ethnographic research and documentary analysis. Kat is also a co-investigator on WS8 where she leads the collection of qualitative data for our internal evaluation.

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Liddy is a Professor of Public Health at the University of Sheffield and honorary consultant in Public Health at Public Health England. She is also Director of Research for the National Centre for Sport & Exercise Medicine in Sheffield and leads the NIHR Public Health Research Review Team. She currently leads the NIHR CLAHRC-YH Public Health & Inequalities Theme and is a member of the Executive and Management Committees for the NIHR School for Public Health Research.

Liddy is a SIPHER Health Inequalities Expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to shape and support our focus on Health Inequalities.

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Liz is a NIHR Knowledge Mobilisation Research Fellow and a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield. A former analyst for the UK government, Liz has worked in multiple social and public health policy fields including employment and health, employability skills and welfare. As a civil servant she managed the Secretariat for the Ethnic Minority Employment Taskforce led by the Minister of State for Employment. She leads the School of Health and Related Research’s Health Equity and Inclusion group.

Liz is a Workstrand 1, 2 and 8 Co-Investigator and is currently leading a systematic review on Health In All Policies.

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Louise was a registered Public Health Specialist and social scientist with BA (Hons) in Applied Politics, MAs in Industrial Relations and Public Health and PhD in Sociology. With over 30 years of experience in health and local government, Louise held national, regional and local roles in: health research, policy and strategy; commissioning; public health; and intelligence and knowledge management. In her last role, she headed up a corporate intelligence unit within the Policy, Performance and Communications Service of Sheffield City Council and managed Sheffield’s SIPHER embedded researchers. Louise tragically passed away in November 2021, and we miss our lovely, dedicated colleague.

Mark is Professor of Geography at the University of Leeds and Co-Director of Leeds Institute for Data Analytics. He has research interests in spatial modelling and analytics, including micro simulation, agent-based models, geodemographics and spatial interaction modelling. He is also a Fellow and Programme Director for Urban Analytics at the Alan Turing Institute.

Mark is a Co-Investigator on SIPHER Workstrands 3 and 5.

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Mark is a Reader in Economics at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on health, wellbeing and work, using advanced statistical methods applied to large-scale, longitudinal datasets. He was a theme co-lead at the What Works Centre for Wellbeing and is currently Deputy Principal Investigator of a Health Foundation project investigating the causal impact of health on labour market outcomes.

Mark is a Co-Investigator on Workstrands 4 and 7.

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Mark is part of the Workstrand 2 Evidence Synthesis team. He works alongside Duncan Chambers, Fiona Campbell and Ruth Wong.

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Mark is Professor of Public Health and Dean of the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR). He is an academic public health doctor and a statistician. Mark’s research interests relate to the management of uncertainty and the value of information in decision making, particularly when using mathematical and computer models to predict clinical or policy outcomes.

Mark is a Co-Investigator on Workstrand 4 of SIPHER.

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Nik is an Associate Professor in Data Analytics for Population Research at the University of Leeds. His research utilises existing and emerging data to produce high resolution estimates and projections of populations and their demographic characteristics. Nik is also a Turing Fellow, where he is developing methods to integrate information on human behaviour which are lacking from current demographic models.

Nik co-leads Workstrands 3 and 5 of SIPHER with Alison Heppenstall. WS3, Data & System Monitoring, builds a secure data infrastructure, creates detailed simulated populations and develops a system monitoring function to inform adaptive policymaking. WS5, Policy Microsimulation, models the impacts of environment and policy on the characteristics of individuals and households, showing how policy impacts differ across geographic areas and societal groups.

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Richard is Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Sheffield and has previously held chairs at the University of Liverpool, University of Manchester and Bangor University. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and a Fellow of the British Academy. Most recently his research has focused on why social risk factors (for example childhood adversities such as poverty, abuse and bullying) provoke the cognitive and emotional changes that lead to psychotic symptoms.

Richard is a SIPHER Public Mental Health Expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to shape and support our work in Public Mental Health.

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Robin is a Professor in Decision Modelling and Optimization at the University of Sheffield. His research interests include modelling, analysis and optimization for supporting decision-making. Robin leads the interdisciplinary ‘CASCADE’ project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, which aims to build systems-based, theory-driven models of alcohol use dynamics in the US. He also develops methods for robust and distributed multi-objective optimization applied to the design of complex engineered products.

Robin is the Lead for WS7, our Economic Evaluation & Decision Support workstrand, which uses distributed, robust multi-objective optimization to develop a cross-sector economic evaluation tool that identifies those strategies that perform well across key policy outcomes and for different assumptions about future developments.

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Email: r.purshouse@sheffield.ac.uk 

Ruth is a Professor of Education at the University of Manchester, where her research interests centre around education, disadvantage and place. She also works more broadly in the field of social policy, focusing on poverty and inequality in the UK and particularly on spatial inequalities and policies to address them, including neighbourhood regeneration and city-region devolution. She currently heads the Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit at the University of Manchester (IGAU), funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the University. As interest in ‘inclusive growth’ emerges in the UK, IGAU is exploring what can be done locally to ensure more even distribution of the benefits of economic growth.

Ruth is a SIPHER Inclusive Growth Expert, working across the 8 SIPHER Workstrands to shape and support our work on Inclusive Growth.

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Ruth is part of the Workstrand 2 Evidence Synthesis team. She works alongside Duncan Chambers, Fiona Campbell and Mark Clowes.

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Visakan is a Professor in Signal and Information Processing at the University of Sheffield. His research focuses on complex systems modelling and control with applications ranging from aerospace, biomedical and social sciences. A key area of his research is developing data driven dynamic and spatio-temporal modelling methods. He is also the Director of Rolls-Royce University Technology Centre in Control, Monitoring and Systems Engineering.

Visakan leads Workstrand 4 of SIPHER on Causal System Dynamics Modelling. WS4 models the dynamics and feedback effects of higher-order causal processes, for example the relationships between unemployment, poverty and mortality.

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