Our people
Emma Gordon
Director, ADR UK & ADR England
Dr Emma Gordon is Director of the ADR UK Strategic Hub and Director of ADR England. She is responsible for setting the strategic direction for the programme, leading on the coordination of the partnership and engagement with senior stakeholders, to improve access and analysis of administrative data to inform policy decisions. She is also part of the ADR UK Leadership Committee, and is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS). Emma joined ADR UK from HM Treasury, where she led the team supporting government economists and social researchers across government. Prior to this, Emma was Head of Health Analysis at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), and at the start of her career was a post-doctoral researcher on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
Clare Jess
Project Manager, ADRC NI (ADR NI)
Clare Jess is the Project Manager for the Administrative Data Research Centre in Northern Ireland (ADRC NI). She is the lead for the operational coordination of the ADRC within the ADR NI partnership, managing the delivery of research programmes, and is based at the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences within Queen’s University Belfast. Clare also has extensive experience working in public health research within higher education.
Chris Dibben
Co-Director, ADR Scotland (Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research)
Professor Chris Dibben is Director of the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR), and is Chair of Geography at the School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh. He is co-lead for the ADR Scotland partnership, and runs a team of researchers working on the Lifelong Health and Wellbeing Strategic Impact Programme, exploring data relating to health and wellbeing impacts of commuting, education, and Scotland’s New Towns. Chris is also a member of the ADR UK Leadership Committee.
Alastair McAlpine
Chief Statistician, Scottish Government
Alastair McAlpine is the Scottish Government’s Chief Statistician. He has overall responsibility for the coordination and implementation of professional standards that help maintain trustworthiness in the use of data, its quality, and that deliver improved outcomes for people in Scotland. Ally brings a wealth of experience having worked previously as Head of Agricultural Statistics, within the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services, and won several awards when he led the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation including the Civil Service award for ‘Use of evidence and analysis in policy making’ in 2017. Ally is co-director of ADR Scotland and a member of the ADR UK Leadership Committee.
In a previous post, Alastair was responsible for the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) which is the Scottish Government’s official tool for identifying deprived areas across Scotland. In this role, and in addition to publishing the SIMD in 2016, he led on work to open up the code behind SIMD to encourage its re-usability and facilitate analysts who were linking other data sources to the index.
David Ford
Co-Director, ADR Wales (Swansea University)
David is Professor of Informatics at Swansea University and Co-Director of ADR Wales. David leads the SAIL Databank and is also responsible for the development and use of Swansea’s Secure e-Research Platform (SeRP). David is the principal investigator and Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Register and is also the deputy Director of the Health Data Research UK (HDR UK) site for Wales and Northern Ireland. David is Co-Investigator on a number of research grants including Healthwise Wales, Challenging Human Environments and Research Impact for a Sustainable and Healthy Digital Economy (CHERISH-DE) and National Centre for Mental Health (NCMH). David is an active member of numerous committees, including the ADR UK Leadership Committee, and national bodies relating to health informatics and health-related research.
