About PLuS Alliance

Sir Malcolm Grant was President and Provost of UCL for 10 years from 2003. He was previously Pro Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, where he was the Professor and Head of Department of Land Economy and Professorial Fellow of Clare College. In 2011 he was appointed by the Prime Minister to be the founding chairman of NHS England, where he served a 7-year term, and was also a director of Genomics England Ltd. He is currently Chancellor of the University of York, President of the Council for At-risk Academics (CARA) and a senior adviser on higher education reform to the governments of France and Russia. He is a barrister and Bencher of Middle Temple. He has previously served as chairman of the Russell Group, the Local Government Commission for England and the UK Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission. He was appointed CBE in 2003 and knighted in 2013.

Michael M. Crow, PhD, became the 16th President of Arizona State University in 2002. An academic leader and educator, designer of knowledge enterprises, and science and technology policy scholar, Professor Crow is guiding the transformation of ASU into one of the nation’s leading public metropolitan research universities, an institution that combines the highest levels of academic excellence, inclusiveness to a broad demographic, and maximum societal impact—a model he terms the “New American University.” Under his leadership, ASU has established more than a dozen new transdisciplinary schools and large-scale research initiatives, nearly tripled its research expenditures, and completed an unprecedented infrastructure expansion.

Professor Ian Jacobs BA, MA, MBBS, MD, FRCOG is President and Vice-Chancellor of UNSW Sydney Professor Jacobs came to Australia from the UK, where he had a distinguished career as a leading researcher in the area of women’s health and cancer and in university leadership. Immediately prior to joining UNSW he was Vice President and Dean at the University of Manchester and Director of the Manchester Academic Health Science Centre, a partnership linking the University with six healthcare organisations involving over 36,000 staff. He was previously at University College London, where he created and led the Institute for Women’s Health, was Research Director of UCL Partners and Dean of the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences.  Professor Jacobs is the Principal Investigator for the Cancer Research UK and Eve Appeal funded PROMISE (Prediction of Risk of Ovarian Malignancy Screening and Early Detection) programme and on several large multicentre clinical trials including the UK Collaborative Trial of Ovarian Cancer Screening involving 202,000 participants in 13 collaborating UK centres and the UK Familial Ovarian Cancer Screening Study. In 2005 Professor Jacobs established the Uganda Women’s Health Initiative, which he still chairs and which conducts a series of projects in Uganda including a cervical screening programme. He has been President of the British Gynaecological Cancer Society (2001-2004) and of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (2005-2007). He is Medical Advisor to the Eve Appeal charity (also known as the Gynaecology Cancer Research Fund) which he founded in 1985, a Patron of Safehands for Mothers, founder and non-Executive Director of Abcodia Ltd and patent holder of the ROCA (Risk of Ovarian Cancer Algorithm).

Professor Shitij Kapur is the President & Principal of King’s College London. He returned to lead King’s in June 2021, following more than four years at the University of Melbourne, where he was Dean and Assistant Vice Chancellor (Health) for the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and interim Deputy Vice Chancellor (International).

Professor Kapur is well known at King’s having previously served, between 2007 to 2016, as Assistant Principal (Academic Performance), Dean and Head of School for the Institute of Psychiatry and the founding Executive Dean of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN).

During his time in Melbourne Professor Kapur significantly increased the educational footprint of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, introducing innovative models of learning, increasing both research income and impact, while doubling philanthropic support. In collaboration with colleagues across the university and medical research Institutes he was involved in creating the Centre for the Digital Transformation of Health and establishing the Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery. He Co-Chaired the Australian Million Minds Mission and during the Covid pandemic took a lead role in bringing together scholars from the Group of Eight Universities to deliver the ‘Roadmap to Recovery – a Report for the Nation’.

In this role Nick provides strategic leadership and support to the Vice-Chancellor in generating external research income and improving UNSW’s overall research performance, including higher degree research students.Nick is a clinical scientist whose research is in developmental biology and maternal-fetal medicine.He chairs the Steering Committee of the Association of Academic Health Centers International and sits on the Board of SPHERE (Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research & Enterprise). Past roles include President of the International Fetal Medicine and Surgery Society and Chair of the Go8 Deans of Medicine Committee.

Nancy Gonzales, PhD, is Executive Vice President and Provost of ASU. An alumna of ASU, Professor Gonzales earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She received her PhD from the University of Washington. Gonzales is also the co-director at the Prevention Research Center, which focuses on preventative interventions for children who are at risk of developing mental health problems because of exposure to the high-stress situations of parental divorce, parental death, and inner-city Mexican American children in transition to high school.

Gonzales’ research examines cultural and contextual influences in social, academic, and psychological development of youth across their lifespan. The aims of this work are to translate findings into community-based interventions that are effective at promoting successful adaptation and reducing social inequalities and health disparities for high-risk populations.

Professor Evelyn Welch is Vice-Principal (Arts & Sciences) and Professor of Renaissance Studies in the Department of History, School of Arts& Humanities. Her early work centred on Renaissance Milan and fifteenth-century court culture. She later became interested in issues of consumption and went on to work with colleagues in Economic History and Cultural History, resulting in my publications on shopping, marketplaces and pedlars. Her current research interests include Renaissance and Early Modern Material culture, consumption in Early Modern Europe dress and fashion in Early Modern Europe and smell and the senses in Early Modern Europe.

With leadership experience in multi-stakeholder environments, notably in the communications and higher education sectors, Paul leads the development and implementation of strategic research and education initiatives for the Alliance, working closely with a Governance Board and Advisory Board. Flagship initiatives are in collaborative research, technology-enabled learning and engineering education, with dozens of researchers, academics, students and professional staff collaborating in new ways and reaching out to work with industry and government partners. Prior to joining the Alliance, Paul was the founding Director of the Australia-Indonesia Centre at Monash University, which brings together four Australian and seven Indonesian universities. He is a former Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at Monash University, a Leadership Fellow in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California San Diego, and a former Editor-in-Chief of The Age, one of Australia’s leading multi-media publishers. Paul has a passion for life-long learning and for building global networks of influence.