Ivy is a public health practitioner and occupational therapy graduate with a passion for reducing health inequalities and improving health and wellbeing. She has experience working with children and adults, including people with learning disabilities and mental health needs. As a Research Ambassador with Healthwatch Essex, Ivy is committed to ensuring that patients’ and communities’ voices help shape research and health services. She believes that meaningful public involvement leads to more inclusive, person-centred care for everyone.

An experienced patient advocate and lay member working with medical regulators, Royal colleges, University research teams and Healthwatch. She combines pragmatic patient experience with NHS strategic context. Currently exploring the health research world. Moira is a UseMyData Executive Group member and critical friend in the health data sharing debate, advocating for proper safeguards, two-way trust and transparency.

In her day job Anna is a qualitative social researcher and loves working with the public to shape public services. She joined DSxHE to facilitate the PPIE working group, to help bring the voices of patients and carers into data science projects. Anna loves her job because it reminds her every day of the diversity of views and experiences that shape how people use services. She hopes that by bringing people’s voices into important decisions she can help create services that work for everyone. When she’s not working Anna’s favourite activity is hiking in the mountains with her dog. She also recently qualified as a yoga teacher even though she still can’t touch her toes without bending her knees.

Samina Begum has dedicated her career to mental health advocacy, supporting vulnerable communities who face barriers to accessing services. Due to health challenges and caring responsibilities, she transitioned from her professional role and became actively involved in PPIE as a lived experience participant. She has served as a Community Researcher and Research Ambassador, working to ensure research reaches and benefits underrepresented groups. Additionally, she reviews funding proposals for organizations like NIHR and universities, championing inclusive and equitable research.Public involvement in health data research is essential because it ensures that findings are relevant, trustworthy, and reflective of diverse real-world experiences. It helps create research that is more inclusive and equitable, leading to better health outcomes. Engaging communities empowers individuals and ensures that research aligns with their needs and lived realities.

Curie is a multidisciplinary Creative and Lived Experience Consultant interested in global innovation in health care, new developments in medical science, health data, AI in medicine  and quantum technologies as well as being really excited about what the future holds for biometrics. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with God, connecting with nature, yoga, sound baths, theatre, cinema, travelling and watching documentaries. She cares about the climate and is passionate about social justice. Curie is a pescatarian.

Rachel Hill has lived with her own mental ill-health for over 40 years and after losing her teaching career, now finds real life purpose and meaning in her activism with PPIE /Lived Experience advisory work.  She hopes to provide positive solutions to organisations who can make policy changes and decisions which will improve health care and services for the UK and internationally.  Always keen to give positive solutions and committed to ensure the voice of the public and patient is heard and valued. As research and data is a big part of this jigsaw of improving health and social care  her involvement with DsxHE ensures she can influence the organisations able to raise awareness about how data science, as a tool, can be used to better health equity.

Nick Murray lives on the North Yorkshire coast. His main career was in social care, specifically mental health and learning disabilities for over thirty years. He has also worked part time as an Expert by Experience at Teesside University, for the past 14 years, working primarily in the School of Health. He was a carer for his parents for 10 years. They lived at home and both had Alzheimer's. It was through this experience he became involved in his local authority's Social Care co-production panel. He hopes that he can make services more accessible, easier to navigate and improve the services themselves. He has been involved in a few PPIE projects in recent years. He enjoys travelling, photography, swimming and walking, together with a keen interest in new technologies particularly AI.

James Norris is a member of the Kings College Hospital Quality Improvement (QI) team and has presented the team’s ideas at international level. He currently works with the hospital to improve patient-staff communication and involvement. He is also involved in Carers Hub Lambeth where he was a trustee for eight years and helped to develop the charity and expand their services and support for carers. Outside of health and care, James has worked in opera, television and film with credits on well-known BBC and ITV programmes. He has been a freelance writer and presenter and has many directing credits and enjoys coaching people in the performing Arts.

Always considered quirky by default, Amy WP is a late diagnosed, rather complicated neurodivergent person with a complex presentation of mental and physical health conditions. She therefore tries to harness the experience of these to help and speak for others as much as she can. She is committed to co-production, lived experience advisory work and works with a wide range of organisations - the NHS, charities, universities and many more besides. The work is wide ranging and plentiful, including much about data. She wishes to make any meaningful difference she is able to for others- advocating for and driving change to make people’s lives better.

Pam Smith lives in a rural part of North Staffordshire. She is, depending on the moment, a Surveyor, a Housing Officer or a Welfare Officer by design, and a Cancer Patient by fate. She is also now a patient representative of many years standing and in this role, she advises on research studies in both the public and pharma domains. She reviews research applications for Blood Cancer UK, the NIHR and Oxford Cancer.  She is also a public member of the Protect Study/Dementia UK and sits on the strategy group at the Cicely Saunders Institute for PalliativeCare. Finally but most importantly, she is a Wife, Mom, and Grandma, who now appreciates life in all of its strange shapes and forms. Pam enjoys travelling, reading, and watching crime thrillers on the box. She also really enjoys relaxing while watching the evening sky from her bedroom window!

Kelly Tunley believes that to understand the data, the real-world systems matter just as much as the beta (weak puns included). She brings together responsible AI, research and public involvement with lived experience as the parent of a son with complex disabilities. She also served as an Expert in Residence at The Alan Turing Institute and is an BSI AI Management Practitioner.  Before moving into AI and becoming a carer, Kelly worked for global technology companies. In her spare time, she enjoys scriptwriting, improv and weightlifting.

Sienna-Mae Yates is a public contributor involved in a range of health and data research projects. She’s particularly interested in making sure research is genuinely inclusive and shaped by the people it’s meant to benefit, not just in theory but in practice. She brings perspectives from living with long-term health conditions and from supporting others, which helps keep work grounded in real experiences. As part of the DSxHE PPIE working group, she’s keen to support meaningful involvement in data science and make it feel more accessible and relevant. She enjoys working with researchers to ask the awkward questions, challenge assumptions and help improve how projects are designed. Outside of this, she’s usually spending time with her five chihuahuas and keeping things fairly low key.