Susan Michie is Professor of Health Psychology and Director of the Centre for Behaviour Change at University College London (www.ucl.ac.uk/behaviour-change). She is co-Director of NIHR’s Behavioural Science Policy Research Unit, leads UCL’s membership of NIHR’s School of Public Health Research and is an NIHR Senior Investigator. Professor Michie’s research focuses on behaviour change in relation to health and the environment: how to understand it theoretically and apply theory to intervention development, evaluation and implementation. Her research, collaborating with disciplines such as information science, environmental science, computer science and medicine, covers population, organisational and individual level interventions. Examples include the Human Behaviour-Change Project (www.humanbehaviourchange.org) and Complex Systems for Sustainability and Health www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/environmental-design/research/research-projects/cussh. She is an investigator on three Covid-19 research projects.

She serves as an expert advisor on the UK’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behavioural Science (Covid-19) and is a consultant advisor to the World Health Organisation on Covid-19 and behaviour. She is also expert advisor to Public Health England and the UK Department of Health and Social Care, is Chair of the UK Food Standard Agency’s Social Sciences Advisory Committee and chaired the Academy of Social Science’s ‘Health of People’ project.

Elizabeth Murray is a Professor of eHealth and Primary Care, Clinical Director of the Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Co-Director of the eHealth Unit at University College London, UK. She practiced as a GP for almost 30 years, retiring from clinical practice in 2019. Her interest in digital health started in the 1990s when she undertook two randomised controlled trials in primary care determining the effects of computerised decision aids on patient treatment choices for Hormone Replacement Therapy (menopausal women) and Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy (men). In 2001 she was awarded a Harkness Fellowship in Health Care Policy from the Commonwealth Fund and spent a year at the University of California San Francisco studying the effects of the internet on the doctor-patient relationship. On her return she was awarded a Department of Health Career Scientist Award (2002 - 07).  She set up the UCL eHealth Unit in 2003, which grew which grew rapidly to be one of the largest, most-respected multi-disciplinary research groups in the field of eHealth in the UK. She has held a Visiting Fellowship at the Department of General Practice in the University of Melbourne, Australia since 2012, and was Head of the Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health 2015 - 2018.  Between 2015 and 2019 she was Managing Director of a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, HeLP Digital, which existed to disseminate evidence-based digital health interventions developed at UCL across the NHS and internationally.  Her grant income for the past 5 years is over £16 million, and she has around 200 publications. 

Afroditi Stathi is Associate Professor in Active Ageing and Health at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests cover the promotion of active ageing and the development of lifestyle interventions targeting lifelong health and well-being. She led Project ACE [Active, Connected and Engaged Communities], one of only two UK initiatives to be classified as a promising practice in the national review of 952 initiatives “Identifying what works for local physical activity interventions”, published by Public Health England. She recently completed the NIHR-funded REACT study [REtirement in ACTion]. This was a pragmatic multi-centre randomised controlled trial with a 24-month follow up, which tested the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive physical activity and health behaviour maintenance programme aiming at preventing mobility-related disability in older people. https://www.thereactstudy.com/

 Her research is firmly based on public engagement and interdisciplinary collaborations with national agencies, national and international academics, policy-makers, primary care trusts, public health departments, service providers, local councils, volunteer organisations and charitable trusts. In 2017, she was awarded the University of Bath Vice-Chancellor’s award for Public Engagement with Research. In 2019, Afroditi served on the Older Adults Expert Working Group for the update of the UK Chief Medical Officer Physical Activity Guidelines.

Afroditi has attracted in excess of £5million in external funding from agencies such as the National Institute for Health Research (Public Health Research Programme), (Research for Patient Benefit programme); MRC (Lifelong Health and Well-being Initiative), (National Prevention Initiative), EPSRC, and European Commission. 

Sharon is Professor of Behavioural Sciences and Health in the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit. She co-leads the Unit's Complexity programme. She is also Head of the Population Health Research Facility, which supports the design, planning and delivery of high quality community based research and is part of the Glasgow Clinical Trials Unit. She currently leads the Institute of Health and Wellbeing Solutions Focussed Research Theme, which is the largest of the Institutes three research themes. She leads a team of senior staff representing each of the research groups within the Institute to develop a strategy to deliver world class Solution Focussed Research.

Sharon has recently completed a 5 year MRC/University of Glasgow Senior Fellowship. The fellowship focussed on (1) developing a better understanding of social support and social networks and how they can facilitate behaviour change, (2) developing and testing interventions which seek to harness social support and social networks to help initiate and maintain behaviour change and (3) exploring how technology can be used to facilitate this.

Sharon’s main research interests lie in the areas of diet, physical activity, obesity and mental health. She is also interested in social networks and mobile health technologies. She has methodological expertise in randomised controlled trials and in the development and evaluation of complex interventions, as well as mixed methods approaches and process evaluation.

Sharon is a member of the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment Programme Clinical Evaluation and Trials Committee. She is also a member of the National Institute for Health Research Policy Research Programme Committee and the Chief Scientist Office Health Improvement Protection and Services Committee. She is also a member of the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity and BMC Public Health. She is a member of the UK Society of Behavioural Medicine and is chairing the Local Organising Committee and co-chairing the Scientific Programme Committee for the International Society of Behavioural Medicine Congress 2020.