ÍâÍøÌìÌÃ

Chris Barnes is Head of Science of AI at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), where he leads strategic research into AI uncertainty quantification, trustworthy AI, and metrics for data quality. His work supports the development of reliable, transparent, and fit-for-purpose AI systems, particularly in critical sectors such as healthcare and manufacturing. He also holds a professorship in Systems and Synthetic Biology at University College London (UCL), where his academic research focuses on AI, computational modelling, engineering biology, and biomedical applications.

Nicholle Bell started her independent career as a NERC Fellow at University of Edinburgh. Her group develops NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry methods to characterise and monitor complex mixtures, with a particular focus on peat and Scotch whisky. This includes monitoring peatlands under restoration for carbon storage to understanding the source of flavour in peated whisky. Nicholle has a passion for outreach and has set up a number of outreach programmes in Scotland, including the RSC Spectroscopy in a Suitcase scheme. In recognition of her innovative research and outreach, she was awarded the RSC Joseph Black Award in 2017 and recently the RSC Environment, Sustainability and Energy Early Career Prize in 2024.

Stephen Husbands is Professor, Department of Life Sciences, University of Bath, UK. He is a Fellow of the ÍâÍøÌìÌà and a Member of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (UK). His research has focussed on the medicinal chemistry of CNS active drugs, with a particular interest in developing improved therapies for drug use disorders and pain. Working with police, prisons and charities he is also engaged in projects evaluating, both qualitatively and quantitatively, illicit drugs, with a particular interest in those that are hard-to-detect and rapidly evolving, such as the synthetic cannabinoids, benzodiazepines and synthetic opioids.

Kate’s early academic career, at the UK's Institute of Food Research, focused on infrared sensor design. Her PhD research, on chemometric analysis of datasets produced by infrared spectroscopy, led to a wider interest in the emerging disciplines of computational statistics and machine learning. Since then, she has published widely on multivariate analysis applied to large ‘chemical profile’ datasets (FTIR, NMR, Raman).  Key areas of application have been natural product integrity issues, and plant and human metabolomics studies. She heads the Centre of Expertise in Food Authenticity at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and since 2023 has been a Senior Scientific Director at Mestrelab Research SL, a leading producer of scientific software for analytical instrumentation.

Hamish Stewart is a Senior Staff Scientist at Thermo Fisher Scientific Bremen GmbH. He was the lead scientist for the Astral analyser and a developer of Orbitrap instrumentation, and is responsible for research on future commercial mass spectrometers and novel related concepts and technologies.​
​
Previously, he obtained his PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Nottingham and then worked for Shimadzu Research Laboratory (Europe) Ltd.​
​
He is the holder of over 100 patents and is the winner of The George N Hatsopoulos Technical Innovation Award and the HUPO Science and Technology Award.