Fellowship

Karen Halliday is Chair of Systems Physiology at the University of Edinburgh. She studies systems approaches to biological problems and conducts cross-disciplinary research spanning molecular-genetics, mathematics, computational science, the humanities and social sciences. She has directed large, multifaceted cross-disciplinary projects, published widely in her primary research area of plant photobiology, and with social scientists on STEMM diversity and inclusion. Karen has longstanding (12+ years) involvement in equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) innovation within her own institution and the wider community. In 2020, Karen became College Dean Systematic Inclusion, with oversight of EDI vision and strategy for the College of Science and Engineering. Drawing on her experience as co-founder of the EPSRC Inclusion Matter project, evidenceBase, she employs holistic, evidential, system-grounded approaches, aimed at eliciting organization-level interventions at scale.
Karen’s community facing work includes membership of the Hong Kong REF Panel for Biology (2013-18), founding Director of the Edinburgh Plant Science consortium in 2015, member of the BBSRC Institute Assessment Exercise panel, the BBSRC Future Ways of Working Group and the BBSRC EDI Expert Advisory Group, Executive Board member of the Scottish Consortium for Rural Research, and Scientific Advisor to the Scottish Government Plant Health Centre.