Dame Angela McLean DBE HonFREng FRS

Government Chief Scientific Adviser

Professor Dame Angela McLean is the government Chief Scientific Adviser having taken up the role in April 2023. She is also Head of the Government Science and Engineering Profession. Prior to this Dame Angela was the Chief Scientific Adviser for the Ministry of Defence.

Until April 2023, Dame Angela was a professor of mathematical biology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College. Angela’s research interests lie in the use of mathematical models to aid our understanding of the evolution and spread of infectious agents.

Angela is interested in the use of natural science evidence in formulating public policy and has co-developed the Oxford Martin School Restatements: an activity that restructures and presents the evidence underlying an issue of policy concern or controversy in a short, uncharged, intelligible form for non-technical audiences.

Dame Angela established mathematical biology at the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council’s Institute for Animal Health in 1994. Before this, she was a Royal Society Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and a Research Fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

In 2009 Angela was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. She has been awarded the Gabor Medal in 2011 and the Weldon Memorial Prize in 2018. She received her damehood in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.