Bryony Butland is the Director Research and Innovation at Queen Mary University London where she oversees research support functions, impact, business development, PGR support and other key programmes. She has over 20 years of experience of R&D policy and funding across the R&D sector. A civil servant for many years she worked for several government departments on a range of policy issues from public health to energy to research and innovation policy. In central government she led work on the case for investment in research and innovation, helped develop several government research and innovation strategies and played a leading role in setting up of UKRI and the Higher Education and Research Act. Working for UK funder UKRI she led on research infrastructure investment and financial sustainability. Before that she worked as a post doc in a small bio tech company after completing her PhD in Genetics.