Professor Emily Jefferson became Director of DARE UK in March 2026, on a 90% secondment to UKRI. She also holds a 10% role at Health Data Research UK as Strategic Advisor (Technology), alongside an honorary appointment as Professor of Health Data Science at the University of Dundee. Emily was Interim Director of DARE UK from January 2024, in a part-time capacity, while also serving as Chief Technology Officer at Health Data Research UK.
DARE UK (Data and Analytics Research Environments UK) is a UKRI-funded digital research infrastructure programme, delivered by Health Data Research UK and Administrative Data Research UK. The programme is developing a connected national network of secure data research environments to enable trustworthy access to sensitive data for research in the public good. As Director, Emily leads the programme’s strategy and delivery, working with data custodians, researchers, technologists and the public to advance secure, ethical and transparent data-enabled research.
Emily previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Health Data Research UK from November 2022. In this role, she led the development and delivery of technology services that enabled consistent, meaningful research access to health data. This included the Health Data Research Gateway, which supports the discovery of health datasets and streamlines access request management, enhancing the ethical, secure and transparent use of health data and related assets.
Emily established a strong track record of collaboration across Health Data Research UK’s broad community of partners before joining as Chief Technology Officer. Her roles included Director of the HDR Alleviate Pain Data Hub; Co-Principal Investigator for the CO-CONNECT programme; work package lead on the HDR UK Phenotypes Library and the HDR UK Multi-omics Project; and Principal Investigator on the HDR Scottish Data Federation Project and the HDR UK Biorepository Project.
Before becoming Chief Technology Officer, Emily was Director of the Health Informatics Centre at the University of Dundee for 10 years. During this time, she led a large team delivering services and academic collaborations across more than 700 research projects spanning health informatics, data science, data management, governance and machine learning. She also held a part-time role at the University of Glasgow for 18 months.
Emily’s main research interest is the development of innovative methods for providing sensitive linked data at pace and scale, while meeting both data governance requirements and the needs of the research community. She has wide-ranging interests in health data science, has attracted more than £100 million in grant funding, and has been Principal Investigator on several programme grants, including the MRC/EPSRC-funded PICTURES programme.
Emily has a degree in Biochemistry and a PhD in Bioinformatics, after which she worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Bioinformatics. She later moved into the finance sector, where she gained extensive industry experience in big data and in leading the delivery of large software and hardware projects. She then took a career break to solo cycle from New Zealand to the UK over the course of a year.
