Nigel received his Ph.D. in biochemistry at the University of Leeds in 1987. He was then awarded a Mr and Mrs John Jaffé Donation Research Fellowship from the Royal Society to work on the proteolysis and membrane anchorage of mammalian cell surface peptidases. In 1989 he was appointed as lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at Leeds, followed by promotions to senior lecturer, reader and in 2001 to Professor of Biochemistry. He served as Director of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (2007-2011), Pro-Dean for Research (2011) and Dean (2012-2014) of the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds.

In 2014 he was appointed to the Chair in Cell Biology in the Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health, Faculty of Medical and Human Sciences at the University of Manchester. He has held roles as Vice Dean for Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health (2016-2020) and Director of Dementia Research for the University (2015-2020). Since 2020 he has been Associate Vice-President for Research.

Professor Besra heads a world-leading multidisciplinary team investigating key aspects of the microbial physiology of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall and the potential role of iNKT/CD1d therapeutics. He has been awarded and successfully managed over 50 research grants valued at over £50 million from The Wellcome Trust, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Medical Research Council (MRC).
 
He has published over 550 internationally peer-reviewed articles (e.g. in Science, Nature, Immunity, Journal of Experimental Medicine, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA), reviews and book chapters, been cited 58,094 times and has an H-index score of 134 (Google Scholar).

Chloe is a Chartered Accountant who has held Finance Director roles across several multinational organisations, including Finance Director for Europe at Croda and Finance Director, Latin America at Smith & Nephew. Prior to her career in the chemical and healthcare industries, she worked in Professional Services at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Chloe has recently set up as an independent business owner in order to focus on her wellness practice.

Kamran is the Head of Open Science at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), where he leads a diverse portfolio of activities that aim to set the standards of a future open science ecosystem. Among these activities is managing the operations of the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3), a global collaboration which has transitioned research output in the discipline of high energy physics to be almost entirely open access.

Kamran holds a PhD from Stanford University on Cooperative Models to support open access publishing and continues to work to support global efforts to address information inequity and global health challenges.

Sarah is an experienced publisher and editor. After leaving academia she worked as an Editor and Publisher at Nature for over 15 years, and was Chief Publishing Officer at Hindawi.

Sarah now runs her own publishing consultancy firm and focusses on launching products and services which are both editorially and commercially successful, including numerous Open Access journals.