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Dame Julia Slingo OBE Former Chief Scientist, UK Met Office	Professor Dame Julia Slingo served as Chief Scientist of the UK Met Office from 2009 to 2016 when she retired. At the Met Office, she led a team of more than 500 scientists working on a broad portfolio of research spanning weather forecasting from hours to days, climate predictions from weeks to years, and climate change projections from decades to centuries. Through her career, she has worked at the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Reading University. Dame Julia was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2015 and Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2016. She is also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Meteorological Society, and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from 9 UK universities, including from Cambridge University in 2023. In her retirement, she has taken on a number of advisory roles, including Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the UN World Meteorological Organisation. She serves on Scotland’s First Minister’s Environment Council, she is a Trustee of the Eden Project, and she works regularly with the Royal Society on topics ranging from extreme events to climate change, and the role of digital technologies. She holds an honorary professorship at Bristol University. Dame Julia Slingo will be speaking on Wednesday 13 March on 'What can anaesthetists do to help the environment? A climate scientist's perspective'
Dr Caroline Corbett President, South African Society of Anaesthesiologists	Caroline is a specialist anaesthetist in full time private anaesthesia practice in Cape Town, South Africa. She is the current President of the South African Society of Anaesthesiologists, a member and previous convenor of the SASA Private Practice Business Unit, and a vocal member of the Progressive Health Forum of South Africa. She is medical director and co-founder of Morgan Joshua Innovation – a start-up medical tech company adopting both frugal and disruptive approaches to ecosystem specific solution-based innovation, as well as SuperDocs – a Foundation Phase Learning and Education start-up. She and her husband are the inventors of SmartBlade, a low cost airway management solution and the first of their medical devices and software innovations. She is trained in ISO-13485 quality systems management and plays an active role in product development and quality assurance. Caroline has a diverse medical background, having trained in the pre-hospital, military, and austere environments, and, although she currently works in private practice, she continues to be actively involved in teaching, training, and mentorship. She was awarded the Global Innovation Award for SmartBlade by the World Federation of Anaesthesiologists in 2017, and she received the Top Female Entrepreneur Award in Africa for Women in Tech from the African Women's Innovation Entrepreneurship Forum in 2019. Caroline continues to use these platforms to promote further diversity, equity, and inclusivity within the STEM space. Dr Caroline Corbett will be speaking on Wednesday 13 September on 'Human-centric innovation: why people must matter most'
Prof Linda Bauld OBE Chief Social Policy Advisor, Scottish Government	Professor Linda Bauld OBE is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. For the past 25 years she has led a range of studies to prevent or treat the main modifiable risk factors for Non-Communicable Diseases including cancer, diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases with a particular focus on tobacco, alcohol, diet and inequalities in health. More recently she has been involved in studies to address or better understand responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Professor Bauld is Director of the SPECTRUM Consortium, involving 10 UK Universities and partner organisations funded by the UK Prevention Research Partnership. She is a former Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health and the World Health Organisation on tobacco control. Between 2014 and 2021 she combined her academic roles with serving as Cancer Research UK’s cancer prevention adviser. She is a member of research funding committees in the UK and Canada, and is a Trustee of Diabetes UK and Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Academy of Social Sciences. Professor Linda Bauld will be speaking on Thursday 14 September on 'Future preparedness for the next pandemic: Learning from COVID-19'
Prof Cathie Sudlow Chief Scientist and Deputy Director, Health Data Research UK and Director, British Heart Foundation	Professor Cathie Sudlow is Chief Scientist and Deputy Director of Health Data Research UK, the UK’s institute for health data science, and Director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, which aims to improve the public’s cardiovascular health through the power of large-scale data and advanced analytics across the UK and beyond. She is also Chair of Neurology and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. Cathie was previously Director of the Centre for Medical Informatics at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh, the first Research Director for HDR UK in Scotland and Chief Scientist of UK Biobank. As a neurology specialist doctor, Cathie’s clinical work has focused mainly on the assessment and treatment of patients with suspected stroke. Cathie’s research interests have always been firmly embedded in the world of big data. Over the last 15 years, her focus has been on leading large-scale, collaborative, open-science initiatives that enable a better understanding of the causes and consequences of health and disease across the life course, leading to new and improved approaches to prevention, diagnosis and treatment. From 2011 to 2019, she led efforts to follow the health of UK Biobank participants through linkage to national health datasets, and during 2020-2021 worked with NHS Digital to develop the first trusted research environment to hold and enable access for research to linked health data from multiple sources for the whole population of England. Cathie is fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She was awarded an OBE for services to medical research in 2020. Professor Cathie Sudlow will be speaking on Friday 15 September on 'What is Health Data Research UK and how can it help you?'
Prof Kariem El-Boghdadly, Featherstone Professor, Guy's and St Thomas', London	Kariem is a Consultant Anaesthetist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Cleveland Clinic London, as well as Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College London. He is the Clinical Service Lead as well as the Research and Development Lead for Theatres, Anaesthesia and Perioperative Medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’. His interests include regional anaesthesia, airway management, perioperative medicine and research delivery. He is the Scientific Officer for the Difficult Airway Society, Editor of Anaesthesia Journal, Editor of Anaesthesia Reports and is well-published in peer-reviewed literature. Prof Kariem El-Boghdadly will be giving his Featherstone Oration on Friday 15 September