Chief Scientific Adviser

Responsibilities

The Chief Scientific Adviser is a part-time position within the Scottish Government. Julie will be in post until September 2025.

The Chief Scientific Adviser Scotland’s role is to champion the use of science to inform policy development, working closely with the Scottish Science Advisory Council to ensure access to the best scientific advice. The role includes promotion of Scotland as a world-leading science base.

Biography

This is a part-time position within the Scottish Government, which Julie carried out as a secondment from her roles as Scientific Director of Moredun Research Institute and CEO of The Moredun Foundation until her retirement from Moredun in September 2023. Julie continues to be CSA, with an extended term now until September 2025.  She also holds a Chair in Food Security at the University of Glasgow’s College of Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences.

As CSA Scotland, Julie champions the use of science to inform policy development.  She works closely with the Scottish Science Advisory Council, of which she is an ex-officio member, to help ensure that the Scottish Government has access to the best scientific advice to inform its work across all policy areas.  The CSA is also a keen advocate, across Scotland and further afield, of our world-leading science base and its potential to benefit our economy, people and environment. 

Julie qualified as a veterinary surgeon from the University of Glasgow's Vet School, gained a PhD in mucosal immunology from the University of Bristol and has a Masters degree in Epidemiology through distance-learning from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She became Chair of Food Security at the University before being appointed as Scientific Director of the Moredun Research Institute and CEO of the Moredun Group in 2004, posts she held for almost 20 years. She became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2007, a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society of Scotland in 2008 and was awarded an OBE for services to livestock research in 2014. Julie was awarded the Royal Smithfield Club Bicentenary Trophy for contributions to agriculture in 2016, and the Dalrymple-Champney’s Cup for veterinary research in 2018.  She is a member of the UK Microbial Forensic Consortium (UKMFC) Advisory Board and the Research Data Scotland Board.

Julie was Vice Chair of GALVmed, a public-private partnership funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Department for International Development; Chair of the UK Science Partnership for Animal and Plant Health, and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board, as well as being a Non-Executive Director of the Animal and Plant Health Agency. In Scotland she was Chair of the Independent Scientific Panel of Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), and a Board member of Quality Meat Scotland (QMS). Her personal research focused on infectious diseases of livestock and aquaculture species, in the UK and in developing countries, with a focus on innovation and diagnostic test development.