Chief Scientific Adviser, Department for Education

Russell Viner is Chief Scientific Adviser for the Department for Education. He is a paediatrician and professor at the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond St. Institute of Child Health and works clinically at University College London Hospitals (UCLH).

His work focuses on public health and policy for children and young people, particularly at the overlap of physical and mental health and the connections between education and health. His research ranges from trials in schools to improve mental health to data science work with very large, linked datasets in health and education. Australian by background, he started work at UCL after medical training in Queensland and a PhD at Cambridge University.

He was President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2018 to 2021, and during the pandemic worked closely with DfE as part of the SAGE children’s subgroup.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci).