Science and Stormont 2024

Steven Agnew is the Director of RenewableNI, the voice of the renewable electricity industry in Northern Ireland. He sits on the board of Energy Cloud NI, a social enterprise which aims to divert surplus renewable electricity to people in fuel poverty. Steven served as MLA of North Down from 2011-2019 and has been an environmental campaigner since 2003.

Dr Steve Aiken OBE MLA serves as Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly and was first elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (South Antrim, Ulster Unionist Party) in 2016. Formerly Chair of the Committee for Finance, Steve now sits on the Windsor Framework Committee and Committee for Finance, and is Chair of the All Party Group for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; Chair of the All Party Group for Aerospace, Defence, Space and Security; Vice Chair of the All Party Group for Climate Action and Member of the All Party Group for Ethnic Minorities. He served as Party Leader from 2019-2021. Steve is a member of the Steering Committees for the British Irish Parliamentary Association and the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and a board member of Christian Aid Ireland.

Steve comes from a diverse background of business and government service. Following a thirty-two year career in the Royal Navy where he served in many senior operational roles, including commanding two nuclear-powered submarines, Steve was the founding Chief Executive of the British Irish Chamber of Commerce and a CEO at a major University. Steve holds a PhD and MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge and a MA from King’s College London in Defence Studies.

John Barry is a father, a political activist, trades unionist, recovering politician and Professor of Green Political Economy in the Centre for Sustainability, Equality and Climate Action at Queens University Belfast.  He is also co-chair of the Belfast Climate Commission, and member of the Sustainable Future Committee of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

What keeps him awake at night is the life opportunities and future wellbeing of his and other children in this age of the planetary emergency and intersecting social and economic injustices within and between countries.  What also keeps him awake at night is the following question: why it is easier for most people to believe in the end of the world than the end of capitalism and economic growth?   What keeps him awake during his day job is why higher education is continuing in a ‘business as usual’ manner while the planet burns, inequality increases, and militarisation and conflict within and between societies grows?

Dr Marie Cowan MRIA MIoD PGeo is the Director of the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland, a senior management board member at the British Geological Survey (BGS), strategic advisor to BGS Wales, and chairs the BGS People, Culture and Skills Oversight Group.
 
Marie is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and an elected member of its council for 2024. She is a board member of the Irish Centre for Research in Applied Geosciences at University College Dublin and also Geosolutions Leeds at University of Leeds.
 
Marie currently chairs Northern Ireland’s Geothermal Advisory Committee for the Department for the Economy; in 2023 Marie was awarded the Geological Society of London Energy Group medal.
 
Marie is also a member of the Institute of Directors (IoD) and holds an IoD diploma in Company Direction. Marie is also a Professional Geologist with the Institute of Geologists of Ireland.
 
Marie holds a 1st Class Hons. B.Sc. Geology and Ph.D. in Geology from Queen’s University of Belfast. Outside work, Marie is the board chair of a community investment company.

Professor Philip Griffiths, Chair of Building Physics, Ulster University. Philip has been undertaking research in the built environment at Ulster for over 30 years. He has brought in over £12m in external funding, and has worked on novel vacuum glazing technologies and thermal energy storage.  His current research revolves around safe, comfortable and sustainable indoor environments, specifically thermal comfort and implementing a circular economy in building services.  He is the deputy chair of the Energy Institute's Academic Accreditation Panel, and a workpackage leader for the EU COST Action CircularB - Implementation of Circular Economy in the Built Environment, circularB.  

Professor Diane Lees-Murdock is Lead for the Centre for Genomic Medicine, a centre of excellence for research at Ulster University using cutting-edge technologies to better understand the genomic and epigenomic basis of degenerative disease, identify individuals at risk and ultimately to improve patient outcomes.  Diane’s research programme is focused on genomic and epigenomic regulation in normal development and disease with a particular focus on cardiovascular disease.

Diane has vast experience of conducting genetic and epigenetic studies, in cellular and animal models as well as human studies.  She has a particular interest in cardiovascular epigenomics, investigating the role of one-carbon metabolism in ensuring the faithful transmission of DNA methylation and how genetic variants in this important metabolic pathway play a role in aberrant methylation in hypertension to provide a greater insight into how nutrition influences the epigenome and cardiovascular risk.

To date Diane has published in a wide range of top-ranked journals across several disciplines and has attracted significant external funding from government agencies in UK and Ireland, charities and industry.  Diane was Chair of the Royal Society of Biology NI from 2017-19, representing expert views and providing a unified voice for the bioscience community in communicating with policy makers to direct scientific policies.  Diane is also a member of the NI Assembly All Party Working Group on STEM.
 
With over 20 years of teaching experience at undergraduate and postgraduate level, Diane founded the world-first fully online PgDip Stem Cell Biology and has experience as Course Director and Academic Division Head for Bio & Healthcare Sciences (2020-24).

Professor Helen McCarthy was formally appointed as Chief Scientific and Technology Adviser (CSTA) in June 2024. Her key responsibilities include co-ordinating a regional strategy to put science and technology at the heart of policy development. She also chairs the newly formed NI Science and Technology Advisory Network (NISTAN), plays a key leadership role within the NI Civil Service (NICS) scientific community, and represents NI’s scientific policy development globally.

As CSTA, Professor McCarthy reports directly to the Head of the NICS and provides advice on policy development across government departments, agencies and with universities, colleges and the wider business community. Professor McCarthy also represents Northern Ireland on the national and international stage in order to enhance awareness of the region’s technological, innovation and R&D capabilities.

This is the first time that Northern Ireland has had an Executive Chief Scientific and Technology Adviser to advise on policy development across government departments, agencies, and with universities, colleges and the wider business community - as distinct from the Chief Scientific Advisers in Department of Health (DoH) and Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).

Alongside this role, Professor Helen McCarthy holds the Chair of Nanomedicine in the School of Pharmacy at Queen’s University Belfast and, prior to taking on the position of CSTA, was the Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Academic Business Development. Between 2020 and 2023, she held a 0.2FTE Professorship in Dublin City University’s School of Chemical Sciences. She is also a graduate of Ulster University, gaining her DPhil in 2001.

Professor McCarthy’s research is centred on novel non-viral delivery systems for nucleic acids and anionic small molecules. These are peptide delivery systems that are purposely designed to solve key criteria for controlled intracellular delivery. In addition to supervising >40 PhD students, producing >150 publications and >200 conference proceedings, and undertaking editorial work, Professor McCarthy has contributed new knowledge as the inventor of a drug delivery technology and is named on 18 patents. After 10 years of academic applications of the technology, Professor McCarthy spun out her technology into pHion Therapeutics which incorporated in 2017. Professor McCarthy was the CEO of pHion for 6 years, exiting in 2023. In that time, Professor McCarthy won INVENT NI, the All-Ireland Seedcorn Awards, and the Vice-Chancellor's Innovation Award. She also secured almost £10M in non-dilutive funding from Innovate UK. Professor McCarthy sits on the Research Advisory Committee for Prostate Cancer UK and has worked with many global pharmaceutical companies to progress her technology.  Helen has also worked closely with Invest NI, Alderley Park, Medicines Discovery Catapult, Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult and the Centre for Process Innovation. Professor McCarthy is a member of Biodesign Europe, European Society of Biomaterials and NED for Antigenesis Biologics.

Helen is a Chartered Chemist and a Chartered Scientist, with a PhD in coordination chemistry from the University of Exeter. During her thirty-year career at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), she has developed an extensive knowledge of the chemical science community across both education and industry, and has led high-profile international campaigns to address inclusion and diversity in science and the role of the chemical sciences in tackling global challenges.

Helen was appointed CEO of the RSC in 2021 and continues to be an influential advocate for the role that the chemical science community plays in making the world a better place through her leadership of an international publishing business and professional body. She is an appointed member of the Executive Board for the European Chemical Society (EuChemS).

From 2018 - 2021, Helen was Chair of the Science Council, a UK organisation for the advancement of the science profession. During this time, she led an extensive change programme to embed a new strategy. She has also chaired a sector-led group of influential organisations and overseen a significant programme, funded by the Gatsby Foundation, to increase the visibility and professional recognition of technicians in higher education.  In 2020, Helen was invited to join the UK National Policy Commission looking at the future technical skills’ needs of UK higher education. This led to the establishment of the Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy (ITSS) funded by Research England. Helen is now the inaugural chair of the ITSS advisory board.

In January 2024, Helen was awarded an MBE in the King’s New Year’s Honours for her services to science.

Dr Beatrice Smyth is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainable Energy Systems in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Queen’s University Belfast, and is part of the Research Centre in Sustainable Energy. Her research is focused on environmental impacts, and specific areas of interest include life cycle analyses, optimisation of energy pathways, and resource quantification and mapping. Recent research projects straddle the food-energy-water nexus, such as nutrient management of digestate combined with energy recovery, the use of short rotation coppice willow to reduce agricultural run-off and improve water quality, and the sustainable use of plastics in a circular economy. Beatrice was Technical Expert and Rapporteur during the development of the EU Sustainable Finance Taxonomy, is on the editorial board of UCL Open: Environment and on the Research Advisory Panel for the Centre for Advanced Sustainable Energy.

As CEO of Manufacturing Northern Ireland, Stephen represents the interests of the sector to Governments in NI, UK, the EU, and the US in areas which impacts on Northern Ireland’s position as a location to create, invest, grow, and sustain a manufacturing business. He is at the forefront of NI’s business community’s actions on Brexit. He was a member of the UK Government’s Board of Trade, UK National President of Junior Chamber and the BBC’s Broadcasting Council and is currently on the Board of a local arts based social enterprise as well as a Visiting Professor in Ulster University’s Business School. In March, Stephen was appointed by the Northern Ireland Economy Minister to Chair the Taskforce to double number of students at Ulster University’s Derry ~ Londonderry campus.

Annette has 35 years of international experience working within the pharmaceutical sector, including at Warner-Lambert, Pfizer and most recently GSK where she was Senior Vice President, Global Head of Product Development and Clinical Supply. She has been directly involved in the research, development and launch of over 30 new medicines in respiratory, infectious diseases, cancer and inflammatory conditions.

She is the recently appointed Chair of the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust and is also a non-executive at the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. She holds various Trustee positions including at Addenbrookes Hospital Charitable Trust (ACT), St John Ambulance charity and Member at the Tonbridge Grammar School Academy.  She is a Council Member at Innovate UK, part of UKRI.

She is currently Senior Advisor at Frazier Life Sciences, a team investing in and building companies developing and commercializing novel therapeutics.

She has a BSc in Chemistry (1982) and a PhD in Organic Synthesis (1985) from Imperial College London and has conducted postdoctoral research with a NATO fellowship at Ohio State University (1985-1987).  

In 2009, Annette was awarded an OBE in recognition of her services to the pharmaceutical sector.  She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Honorary Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society.  She is the current President of the Royal Society of Chemistry - 2024 – 2026.

Peter McReynolds MLA graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in French and Linguistics in 2009, before living and working in Paris, France.
 
He returned to Northern Ireland to study a LL.M in Human Rights Law and obtained a distinction in 2012. Shortly after graduating, he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and became involved in politics.
 
Since then, he has been a councillor in East Belfast, deputy Lord Mayor and was elected as an MLA in 2022.
 
He is an Infrastructure Spokesperson for the Alliance Party with a particular focus on transportation, sustainability and renewable energy.