Journalist and broadcaster Sarah Sands and former Culture Secretary Baroness Nicky Morgan are among four new Science Museum Group Trustees announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Sarah Sands has held roles as editor of the Today programme, BBC Radio 4’s flagship current affairs programme, editor of the London Evening Standard, The Sunday Telegraph and deputy editor of The Daily Telegraph. The Rt Hon Baroness Nicky Morgan of Cotes served as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and as Education Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities, among other roles.
Also announced today as new Trustees are Professor Greg Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds; and Professor Anya Hulbert, Professor of Visual Neuroscience, Newcastle University.
They take up their posts later this autumn, joining four new Trustees announced last month, including Professor Stephen Belcher, Chief Scientist at the Met Office and the Met Office’s representative on the government’s Science and Engineering Profession Board.
Professor Belcher was appointed to the Board of Trustees alongside: James Bilefield, Chair of the international specialist staffing organisation SThree plc and a Non-Executive Director of Money Supermarket and Stagecoach Group plc; Tim Dugher, former chairman of Network Rail’s network certification body; Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng, Head of Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, and Vice President of the Royal Institute of Navigation.
James Bilefield, Tim Dugher and Professors Belcher and Ochieng took up their posts with immediate effect.
Science Museum Group Chairman Dame Mary Archer said: “I am delighted to welcome the appointments of these esteemed colleagues, who will bring to our Board of Trustees a vast breadth of expertise, perspectives and experience. I look forward to their varied contributions to support the exceptional work of the Science Museum Group in inspiring millions of visitors each year and caring for our world-class collection.’
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Trustees are appointed by the Prime Minister following a public appointments process administered by DCMS and overseen by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments.
Our new trustees are:
Professor Stephen Belcher
Professor Stephen Belcher became Met Office Chief Scientist in 2016. As Chief Scientist he leads a team of approximately 800 technical and scientific staff, which includes research into processes and predictability of weather systems, research into the physics of climate change within the Met Office Hadley, and development of innovative technology to translate this research into operational systems. Stephen also represents the Met Office nationally and internationally, for example by serving as a member of the Government Chief Scientific Advisors network and by serving on the World Meteorological Organisations Science Advisory Panel.
Stephen obtained a PhD in fluid dynamics from the University of Cambridge in 1990 and has subsequently published over 100 peer-reviewed papers on the fluid dynamics of atmospheric and oceanic turbulence. Having completed his PhD he became a research fellow at Stanford and Cambridge Universities. In 1994 he moved to the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading, where he worked for nearly 20 years. Motivated by a desire to see his research move into actionable advice, in 2012 he joined the Met Office as Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre.
James Bilefield
James serves on a range of public, private and not-for-profit boards across the technology, services and charitable sectors. He is also an advisor to the UK Cabinet Office, McKinsey & Company and SystemIQ, and has chaired the Digital Advisory Board of the Science Museum Group since 2015. James was previously a serial digital entrepreneur and chief digital officer following a successful career in investment banking at JP Morgan Chase.
Tim Dugher
Tim is a career railwayman who has spent 45 years in the rail industry, progressing from Engineering Apprentice to Chief Operating Officer of Angel Trains Limited via a whole range of technical and management positions throughout the UK. In 2011, after 34 years in full time roles, he made the transition to non-executive status to serve on other Boards including the Rail Safety and Standards Board, Vossloh Kiepe UK, Network Certification Body where he was Chairman, and Porterbrook Leasing where he is currently a shareholder representative Director. He also manages his own management consultancy company, and has served in an Advisory capacity to a number of other companies.
Tim is a Chartered Engineer, having graduated from Aston University, and is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and former Chairman of its Railway Division Board. His other voluntary activities include being an active committee member of the local Institution of Mechanical Engineers Railway Division branch which exists to promote knowledge of engineering developments, as well as a local Parish Councillor.
Professor Anya Hurlbert
Anya Hurlbert is Professor of Visual Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University. She co-founded Newcastle’s Institute of Neuroscience in 2003, serving as its co-Director until 2014, and now steers its Centre for Transformative Neuroscience. She was a Marshall Scholar and holds degrees in physics, physiology, brain and cognitive science, and medicine from Princeton, Cambridge, MIT and Harvard, respectively.
Anya’s research interests are focussed on the understanding of human vision, especially colour perception and its role in cognition and behaviour; her work includes applications in imaging, lighting, visual art, and human health. She received the Newton Medal (the Colour Group GB; 2022) and has delivered many named and keynote lectures, including the Edridge-Green Lecture (the Royal College of Ophthalmologists) and the Richard Gregory Memorial Lecture (Bristol Vision Institute).
Anya speaks and writes widely on colour vision and art, contributes to television and radio programmes, and has devised several science-based art exhibitions, including an interactive installation at the National Gallery, London. In addition to several international advisory boards, Anya serves on the Scientific Consultative Group of the National Gallery, where she was recently Scientific Trustee, and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Vision and Current Biology, the Board of Directors of the Vision Sciences Society, and the Rank Prize Funds Optoelectronics Committee.
Baroness Nicky Morgan
The Rt Hon the Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Nicky Morgan) is a former Conservative Minister having served in the Cabinets of David Cameron and Boris Johnson as, respectively, Minister for Women & Equalities, Education Secretary and Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary. She also chaired the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee for 2 years. She was the Member of Parliament for Loughborough between 2010 and 2019.
She has also served as Financial Secretary, Economic Secretary, a Government Whip and PPS to the Universities Minister. Before being elected she worked as a solicitor specialising in M&A.
Nicky is a founding trustee of a mental health charity in Leicestershire. She is now a member of the House of Lords and has a portfolio career with roles across the private and public sectors, including as a Non-Executive Director at Santander UK, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the Association of British Insurers, the Great Central Railway plc and the Careers & Enterprise Company. Nicky also chairs the Advisory Board of the Reform think tank.
Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng
Professor Washington Yotto Ochieng, FREng, is Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chair in Positioning and Navigation Systems, and Senior Security Science Fellow at Imperial College London. Formerly, he was Head of the Centre for Transport Studies and Co-Director of the Institute for Security Science and Technology at Imperial.
Ochieng is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng). He is also a Fellow of the UK Institution of Civil Engineers, Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, Royal Institute of Navigation (RIN) and Institution of Civil Engineering Surveyors. His research interests include critical infrastructure resilience, user-centric mobility solutions and positioning, navigation and timing systems. In 2013, Ochieng was elected RAEng Fellow in recognition of exceptional and sustained contribution. In 2019, he received highest award from the RIN - Harold Spencer-Jones Gold Medal - in recognition of ‘extensive valued advice to policy makers and for pioneering research in safety-critical navigation and positioning systems’. He is Vice President and Trustee of the RIN. He is Chair and Sub-Panel Chair respectively of the RAEng’s Africa Engineers programme and Global Talent Visa Panel. Ochieng is a Member of the UK-Kenya Challenge Board on Science, Technology and Innovation.
Professor Greg Radick
Gregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. Educated at Rutgers University in New Jersey (where he was born and raised) and then at Cambridge University, he has published widely in the history of the life and human sciences since 1800. His book The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language (Chicago, 2007) was awarded the 2010 Suzanne J. Levinson Prize of the History of Science Society for best book in the history of the life sciences and natural history. His other books include Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (Chicago, 2023) and, as co-editor, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge, 2003; 2nd edition, 2009). He has held fellowships from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, and served as President of the British Society for the History of Science (2014-16) and the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (2019-21). He writes and lectures frequently for general audiences, and has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time and in the PBS/National Geographic television series Genius with Stephen Hawking.
Sarah Sands
Sarah Sands has had a prominent career in journalism; she has edited two newspapers, the Sunday Telegraph and The Evening Standard, and she went on to be editor of Radio 4’s Today programme. She currently serves on the board of Channel 4 and of the Berkeley Group and is a partner at Hawthorn Advisors. She is a trustee of Index on Censorship, an honorary fellow of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge and of Goldsmiths College, London, and is chair of Bright Blue think tank. She founded the Braemar Science Summit now in its second year. She was appointed chair of G7 gender equality advisory council in 2021 and is a member of the council under German presidency this year. She has published a book on monastic lessons, The Interior Silence.