Chief Scientific Adviser, and Director General, Science, Technology, Analysis and Research (STAR), Home Office

Policy Leaders Fellow, Centre for Science and Policy

Professor Jennifer Rubin became the Home Office Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) in January 2021. As CSA, she provides independent scientific advice to the Home Secretary and other Home Office ministers; leads the Home Office Science, Technology, Analysis, Research and Strategy and works with the wider network of CSAs to address cross departmental issues.

Before joining the Home Office Professor Rubin was the Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK’s largest funder of economic and social research.

Previously, she was Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London. Her principal research areas while at KCL included migration, integration and intolerance; communities, crime and justice policy; and the intersections between public health and related areas such as alcohol and drugs policy.

Prior to this, Professor Rubin was Vice President and the Director of Communities, Safety & Justice at RAND Europe. Her projects included developing new metrics for illicit markets; evaluation of illicit drug strategy; cross-national comparisons of interventions to reduce prison populations and reoffending; evaluation of criminal justice interventions; and ethnic, racial, and xenophobic intolerance in Europe.

Before joining RAND, her work included lecturing and research in social and political science, contributing to ministerial consultations and evaluating recruitment procedures for political candidates. She received her PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge and a BA in European Politics from Loughborough University.