Director's Office
Administration
Director
Matthew Hurles, Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute, has overall responsibility for all activities of Genome Research Limited.
Key areas
The Director’s Office team provide leadership and ensure delivery in the following areas.
- Overarching GRL strategy and Sanger Institute Science Strategy
- Organisational funding and the quinquennial review process
- Horizon scanning and long term strategic planning
- Academic and commercial strategic partnerships and stakeholder management
- Faculty planning
- Government and Public affairs
- Science Policy, Open Science and Research Culture
- Impact assessment of our work
- Strategic initiatives
- Interactions with Wellcome
The Team
- The Associate Director represents the Director and works with internal colleagues and external stakeholders to implement, communicate and deliver the vision and mission of the Institute and Campus.
- The Chief of Staff represents and works alongside the Director and is the key strategic link between the Director, their leadership team, the Director’s office and Wellcome.
- The Executive Assistant provides strategic counsel and support to the Director in all activities and leads, manages and execute’s the Institute wide events programme.
- The Head of Faculty Planning is the custodian of the Institute’s Faculty model, co-leads, with HR, individual Faculty review processes, is the link into Faculty and has oversight of the Honorary, Associate and International Fellows programme.
- The Head of Policy identifies policy issues, nationally and internationally, that impact on Sanger science, where our science may feed into broader policy issues, and engages and influences on those issues.
- The Head of Strategy leads the Institute’s strategy, driving and embedding it into the organisation and leads the Institute’s quinuennial funding review.
- The Impact and Evaluation Analyst measures the impact of all Genome Research Limited activities on delivering the missions of the Sanger Institute, Connecting Science and the Wellcome Genome Campus.
- The Research Culture lead works across the Institute to develop a research culture that supports good research practice and integrity.
- The Policy Officer supports the Institute’s work on developing and communicating policy positions and reviews.
- The Archivist promotes and leads capturing and preserving the Institute’s key milestones.
Contact
The Director’s Office Team can be contacted individually or via directorsoffice@sanger.ac.uk, 01223 494739
Core team

Dr Sarion Bowers
Head of Policy and Advocacy

Dr Hayley Clissold
Policy Lead (Research Environment)

Debbie Howe
Executive Assistant to the Director of Strategy Partnerships and Innovation

Austra Jenner-Parson
Impact And Evaluation Lead

Carl Logan
Chief of Staff to the Director

Dr Alice Mann
Head of Academic Programmes

David Nicholson
Policy and Advocacy Manager

Dr Tilda Watson
Archivist

Dr Julia Wilson
Director of Strategy, Partnerships and Innovation
Previous core team members

Dr Laura Humphreys
Project Manager: Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation Programme

Johanna Staines
Former Head Of Strategy

Professor Sir Mike Stratton
Senior Group Leader

Dr Sonia Virdee
Associate Director, Research and Faculty Planning

Steven Zemke
Head of Faculty Planning
The following were also members of this team:
Rachel Curran | Former Associate Director. Currently Head of Administration and Operations at EMBL-EBI |
Jo Jones | Former Executive Personal Assistant to the Director. Currently Deputy Chief of Staff at the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries |