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Board of directors

eLife’s editors, early-career advisors, governing board, and executive staff work in concert to realise our mission.

Board of directors

  1. Christian Doeller

    Director

    Professor Dr. Christian F. Doeller is Vice President of the Max Planck Society and Director of the Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

    Born in Würzburg, Germany; Studies in Psychology at University of Würzburg, Humboldt University Berlin & University of Bonn, Germany; Studies in Computer Science, Bonn; PhD in Psychology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany (2005); Research Fellow, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, ICN & Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology, University College London, UCL, London, UK (2004); Senior Research Fellow, ICN & Institute of Neurology, UCL (2006); Associate Professor & Principal Investigator, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands (2010); Professor of Medicine (Neuroscience), Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway (2016); Director, The Egil and Pauline Braathen and Fred Kavli Centre for Cortical Microcircuits, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, NTNU (2017); Director, Department of Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany (2018). Honorary Professor of Psychology (Learning & Memory), Leipzig University, Germany (2019). Managing Director, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany (2020-2023). Honorary Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience of Learning and Memory, Technical University (TU) Dresden, Germany. Vice President of the Max Planck Society (2023-).

  2. Joanne Hackett

    Chair

    Joanne M. Hackett is the Head of Genomic and Precision Medicine at IQVIA and previously was the Chief Commercial Officer at Genomics England. She is a clinical academic, entrepreneur and investor, and a strategic, creative visionair with global experience spanning successful start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Aside from her curious passion for life and positivity, Joanne is known for building innovation, driving personalised medicine and leading through fast-paced, complex changing ecosystems and integrations. Joanne’s goal is to contribute to bringing the world novel, cost-effective and simple healthcare solutions, and she is particularly keen on building the case for prevention, open science and citizen genomics. She has extensive global experience across academic, business and clinical institutions, and enjoys sharing her experiences with the boards she sits on as well as companies she provides strategic advice to. Joanne has been publicly recognised for her relentless pursuit of revolutionising healthcare and has been named one of the top six Influential Leaders in Healthcare by CIO Look, the Accenture Life Science Leader of the year, Freshfields Top 100 Most Influential Women, One HealthTech Top 70 Women in the NHS, Pharmaceutical Market Europe’s 30 women leaders in UK healthcare and BioBeat Top 50 Women in Biotech Award. Joanne believes in human courage and perseverance against the odds, and demonstrates that positive change, whether in a company or in one’s personal life, can be carved out from even the greatest of trials. As a believer of “health = wealth”, Joanne is an internationally known yoga instructor.

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    Dan O'Connor

    Director

    Dan O'Connor is the Head of Research Environment at Wellcome and until 2019 was the Head of Humanities and Social Science. He has a PhD in the History of Medicine and was previously on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. He has published articles on the ethical challenges of using social media in healthcare, on the ethics of human enhancement, and on the history and politics of bioethics.

    The Research Environment team works to ensure that all of the research that Wellcome funds is open, engaged, ethical, efficient and equitable. The team leads Wellcome's activities in research culture, open research and open access, bioethics, the social and cultural impact of research, researcher-led engagement, and connecting Wellcome's community of researchers.

  4. Erin O'Shea

    Director

    Erin O’Shea is president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Paul C. Mangelsdorf Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. O’Shea was named an HHMI investigator in 2000, became HHMI’s chief scientific officer in 2013, and became the institute’s president in 2016. Prior to joining HHMI’s leadership team, she spent eight years at Harvard, where she directed the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Center for Systems Biology. O’Shea also served on the faculty of the UC-San Francisco. She earned a PhD in chemistry from MIT and a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Smith College.

    O’Shea is known as a leader in the fields of gene regulation, signal transduction, and systems biology. She is currently developing a lab at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has won numerous awards.

  5. Freddie Quek

    Director

    Freddie Quek is Chief Technology Officer at Times Higher Education. He has worked in Singapore, the US and UK across many industry sectors. He started his career in publishing and has worked for Current Science Group, Elsevier and Wiley, helping to transform the industry to digital in pioneering the use of NoSQL technologies and achieving large-scale agile implementations. His portfolio of digital product platforms included the Lancet, Elsevier Health Science and Wiley Online Library.

    He is recognised as one of the UK’s top IT leaders by CIO100 and Computing. In 2021, he started the #joiningthedots initiative to address #digitalinclusion, becoming a Community Board member of the Digital Poverty Alliance and Chair of the BCS Digital Divide Specialist Group. He serves on the boards at the University of Bristol, UK, and BCS Influence Board, and is a member of the Technology Advisory Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He co-founded TechLinkUkraine to help displaced Ukrainian tech professionals, which has now joined forces with BlueHope.ai in supporting all displaced refugees regardless of conflict or country.

    Freddie is a Fellow of BCS and a judge for the UK IT Industry Awards. He has Masters degrees from the London School of Economics, UK, and Henley Business School, UK, and is an alumnus of Oxford University, UK. Currently he is a Research Associate at Henley Business School undertaking doctoral research, and a member of the London Multimedia Lab led by Professor P. Humphreys, London School of Economics.