Bridget is UKCEH's Science Area Head for Soils and Land Use (SLU) which involves leadership and management of more than 100 research staff and 40 postgraduate students across three UKCEH sites. Research in the SLU team tackle urgent challenges such as the need for cleaner air, more sustainable land management practices, restoring soil health, climate mitigation as well as developing new opportunities for policy and business such as green finance and net zero across many habitats from agricultural land to upland, coastal and urban systems. Bridget’s current research is often as the lead for projects requiring the coordination of a large number of partners to improve integration across different disciplines and sectors from catchment/landscape to national scale to improve the evidence base and support national policy development and outcome reporting in the areas of e.g. soil health, ecosystem services, agri-environment schemes and natural capital. Bridget was awarded Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her Services to Soil and Ecosystem Sciences in 2023; the Marsh Award for her Climate Change Research by the British Ecological Society in 2016 and was one of the team awarded the AGI Award for Geospatial Excellence in 2014. She has an H index of 57 and has a publication record with 10,945 citations. She served as the Specialist Adviser for the UK Parliamentary Inquiry into Soil Health in 2016 and was a Member of the EU Mission Board on Soil Health and Food and member 2019-2022.

Dr Jack Hannam is 2023 – 2024 President of the British Society of Soil Science. She is a soil scientist specialising in soil data, digital soil mapping and soil health. Her research focuses on digital soil mapping, applications of conservation agriculture to improve soil health, developing decision support tools for planning soil and landscape decisions and the application of application of national and local scale soil data for policy and business applications. She leads the LandIS team at Cranfield University, who are responsible for the national soil data for England and Wales. Jack joined Cranfield University in 2004 as a Research Officer in Soil Systems. Before joining Cranfield she worked at ETH Zurich and the University of Liverpool on international projects related to environmental magnetism. Jack is also vice chair of the International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) Division 1: Soil in Space and Time. She is an Associate Editor for the journals Soil Use and Management and SOIL. She is a passionate science communicator and has been interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Sky News and BBC World. She founded Soapbox Science in Milton Keynes in 2015, a public outreach platform promoting women in science. She teaches soil systems on the Agrifood and Water MSc programmes at Cranfield and supervises MSc and PhD students. She has developed and delivered advanced training courses in soil systems for NERC early career researchers and bespoke short courses for environmental science professionals.

Dr Sherry (neé Minihan) is originally from Michigan and studied public affairs at James Madison College (Michigan State University) followed by Agricultural, Environmental and Regional Economics (The Pennsylvania State University) and General Equilibrium Modelling (Queen's University Belfast). Her research focuses on integrating the economic system with physical and social systems to inform policy design and implementation strategies. In 2020, she became lead researcher and Project Manager for a partial equilibrium modelling system, the FAPRI UK Project. This is a collaboration between AFBI and the University of Missouri, funded jointly by Defra, DAERA, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Government.

Married with three children. Dairy and beef farmer from Portrush. Graduated from Harper Adams in 2005. Farming in partnership with my parents since 2010. Converted into dairy in 2020. Milking 300 cows in a spring calving block. All calves are reared on farm, breed our own replacements to calve at 2yo. Beef cattle all sold as finished beef at 19-22months. Have been establishing clover and herbal leys for the last three years to reduce dependence on fertiliser.