People

Director of Strategy, RoRI and College Consul, Imperial College London

Stephen has long-standing interests in many different aspects of research, including funding, assessment, equity, culture and publication. He has written extensively on these issues in academic papers and book chapters, in the Guardian, and on his Reciprocal Space blog. Stephen was a founder member of the campaign group Science is Vital in 2010 and served on the board of the Campaign for Science and Engineering from 2012-18. In Autumn 2023 he reached the end of his six-year term as chair of the steering group of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), an organization he has helped to position as a singularly influential force for the promotion of research assessment reform worldwide. 

Stephen was a member of the UK government-convened group which in 2015 produced The Metric Tide report on the use of metrics in research assessment and, most recently, was a co-author of the 2022 Harnessing the Metric Tide report, which looked at options for implementing responsible assessment practices within REF 2028. He has served in an advisory or review panel capacity for a range of UK and international organisations including LERU, ERC, JISC,UKRN, SNSF and FWF.

Alongside these interests, Stephen has been an academic at Imperial College since 1995, forging a research career as a structural biologist investigating molecular aspects of protein-drug interactions and on the replication of RNA viruses. Latterly, he has served as Imperial’s first Associate Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (2017-23) and is now a College Consul, in which capacity he remains closely involved in the research and educational mission of the university.