Ann McNeill is a Professor of Addictions in the National Addiction Centre with a focus on tobacco. She graduated from the University of Nottingham with a first class joint honours degree in zoology and psychology and then carried out her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry focusing on the development of dependence on smoking. Since that time she has held a variety of academic and public sector posts focusing largely on tobacco control research. Ann has an established international reputation, receiving a World Health Organisation award for contributions to tobacco control in 1998. She has published more than 250 academic papers book chapters, reports and opinion pieces on the subject and her research ranges across prevention, cessation, harm reduction and local, national and international policy. Ann was a co-author of the recent systematic review of tobacco product packaging which underpinned the recent government consultation on plain packaging and has a particular interest in the relationship between smoking, mental health and inequalities. She is Deputy Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies. Competing Interest: Professor McNeill leads the Nicotine Research Group in the Addictions Department, IoPPN and receives funding for projects from a variety of funders such as Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and has no links with any tobacco or vaping product manufacturers. Professor McNeill is a NIHR Senior Investigator

Dr Shahab is a Professor of Health Psychology at University College London, Head of the Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health and co-Director of the University College London Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group. He is past President of the European Chapter of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), elected fellow of the British Psychological Society and SRNT, co-Chair of the UK E-cigarette Forum and holds senior editorial roles at the journals Addiction, Nicotine & Tobacco Research and Plos One. Dr Shahab trained in psychology, epidemiology and neuroscience and has over 20 years’ experience in addiction research, tobacco control and health psychology. His expertise spans work on novel behavioural and pharmacological smoking cessation interventions, in particular e-cigarettes, biomarkers, tobacco product regulation and policy, digital health and tobacco and alcohol use epidemiology. Dr Shahab regularly engages with the media to discuss tobacco policy and research, collaborates with academic and non-academic (e.g., governmental and non-governmental) partners, and to date has authored over 250 scientific papers, reports and reviews in this area.

Dr. Karl Erik Lund is currently senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He was Research Director at the Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research from 2006-2018. He has been involved in tobacco control work since the mid-1980s. Dr Lund has been a member of several expert committees including WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC) and served as Associate Editor in Nicotine & Tobacco Research. Dr. Lund has delivered keynote lectures and chaired scientific committees for several international conferences. He has served as an expert witness for the plaintiff in several tort liability lawsuits against the tobacco industry and given statements before the UK High Court of Justice and in the European Court of Justice. Dr. Lund has received the Norwegian Medical Association’s Award in preventive medicine, he holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from 1996 and was formally assessed with qualifications as Professor in 2009.

Hayden McRobbie is Professor of Population Health at Queen Mary University of London and an Honorary Public Health Doctor at Barts NHS Health Trust. He is a recognised leader in healthcare and academia, with extensive experience as a public health physician, researcher, and senior civil servant. His work focuses on risk factors for non-communicable diseases and reducing health inequities. His research, grounded in frontline public health practice, addresses tobacco control, obesity, and health equity. Professor McRobbie is committed to translating research into policy and practice, with a track record of influencing health systems at national and international levels.

Abigail S. Friedman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Yale School of Public Health. Her research focuses on the policy determinants of tobacco, nicotine, and cannabis use and disparities therein, with the overarching goal of informing and facilitating evidence-based policymaking to improve population health and reduce inequality. A health economist by training, she conducts work in three areas. The first uses quasi-experimental methods to estimate the effects of federal, state, and local policies on combustible versus non-combustible tobacco/nicotine product use, in order to inform more nuanced policymaking that accounts for the differing health impacts of these products. The second line of research considers how new tobacco/nicotine and cannabis policies and products impact disparities in use, particularly by socioeconomic status and mental health. Finally, her work on mental health disparities in tobacco product use focuses on identifying the drivers behind these differentials as well as potential means to close these gaps, particularly among adolescents and young adults. Dr. Friedman received her undergraduate degree from Columbia University and her Ph.D. in the economics concentration of Harvard University’s Ph.D. Program in Health Policy.

Robert West is Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at University College London. He specialises in behaviour change and addiction. He is former Editor-in-Chief of the academic journal, Addiction, and has acted as an advisor to the English Department of Health on tobacco control and currently advises the Public Health Wales Behavioural Science Unit. He helped write the blueprint for the UK’s national network of stop-smoking clinics and is co-founder of the Capability-Opportunity-Motivation, Behaviour (COM-B) model of behaviour, the Behaviour Change Wheel framework for intervention development, and the PRIME Theory of motivation. He has authored more than 900 scientific papers and is one of the world’s top cited smoking cessation experts. For more information see https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/10502-robert-west.

Bubbly Sandhu is the UK’s enforcement lead for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Battery takeback regulations, working with businesses both domestically and internationally to drive compliance and responsible recycling practices. She chairs the cross-UK Government Vape Enforcement Committee, bringing together national efforts across multiple government departments to strengthen regulatory enforcement. Runs several programmes for industry awareness and conducts national enforcement campaigns throughout UK as a national regulator. With over nine years in environmental enforcement, Bubbly has led more than 3,000 investigations and secured compliance across a wide range of industries. She is a regular speaker at leading regulatory and sustainability events, sharing insights on enforcement strategy, cross-agency collaboration, and compliance challenges. Prior to this, Bubbly spent 19 years as a strategic analyst and intelligence officer within the UK Prison and Police Services, specialising in organised crime, trafficking, and corruption. Her extensive background in intelligence has enabled her to build strong partnerships across government agencies and the recycling sector, enhancing the UK’s enforcement capabilities in waste recycling and compliance.

After a 16 year career in the police service David joined local government at the London Borough of Camden, retraining and qualifying within the Trading standards team. David has been working in the field of Vapes and Nicotine products since 2012 becoming aware of the sudden increase in vaping products that were reaching the market and their appeal to young people visiting the area. He was responsible for putting together a regionally funded testing operation on these products that identified a number of issues with these products. David was the London Trading Standards Representative on the Tobacco focus group and trained officers in London on Tobacco Products and Standardised Packaging. He has continued his work on vaping products taking a lead on these and preparing training courses for officers across GB and has built up expertise in this area with officers nationally and Public health teams and teaching staff in London. He is currently working for the London Borough of Hackney as Tobacco and Alcohol lead, which incorporates work on vaping products in Hackney and the City of London. He was elected to the Chartered Trading Standards Institute College of fellows in 2022 for his work in the field. David prepared and presented the training for officers across GB in the Single Use Ban and has written and is the trainer in the new CTSI qualification in Tobacco, Vapes and Nicotine products.

Kate Pike is the Lead Officer for Tobacco and Vaping for the Chartered Trading Standards Institute and Co-ordinator for Trading Standards North West. She supports the delivery of Operation Joseph through National Trading Standards to tackle the supply of illegal vapes, and sales of vapes to children. She sits on the Vaping Expert Panel, which provides support to Trading Standards Officers across the country in delivering regulation around vaping as well as to businesses to enable them to comply with the complex legislation around vaping. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) is a professional association which represents and trains trading standards professionals working in local authorities, business and consumer sectors and in central government in the UK and overseas. She has been involved for many years on the regulatory side and was a member of the Department of Health tobacco expert group for many years.

Dr. Jonathan Foulds has spent most of his career finding ways to help smokers beat their addiction to tobacco. He has been a principal investigator on grants totaling well over $27 million and has been invited to speak on smoking cessation in more than 15 countries. Dr Foulds trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Glasgow, and obtained his PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London. He worked at St George’s Hospital Medical School as the UK’s first “lecturer in tobacco addiction” and then moved to University of Surrey and continued to work as a principal clinical psychologist at Broadmoor Hospital, a large maximum security facility for mentally disordered offenders. He has spent most of his career developing and evaluating methods to help smokers beat their addiction to tobacco. He was on the Management Group of the Hungarian Anti-Smoking Campaign (1995-6), has been a technical leader of a World Health Organization project to improve the regulation of tobacco dependence treatment in Europe (2000), and was Director of Research for the UK charity, Quit, which ran the largest telephone helpline for smokers in the world at that time. From 2000-2010 he was the director of the Tobacco Dependence Program at the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey (now Rutgers) – School of Public Health. Although primarily funded for service activities, TDP program members published over 90 articles on tobacco during that period. He has been a principle investigator or co-PI on grants totaling over $50 million and has published over 200 scientific papers and book chapters on tobacco and nicotine. He has been invited to speak on smoking cessation in over 15 countries. He acts as a consultant to pharmaceutical companies developing smoking cessation products, and has testified to FDA on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco on regulation of nicotine replacement therapies. He continues to teach on smoking cessation and conduct research on tobacco and health at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA. In 2025, along with Jill Williams MD, he published the book "Treating Addiction to Tobacco and Nicotine Products" (American Psychiatric Association Publishing).  

Dr Harry Tattan-Birch is a Senior Research Fellow and Statistician in the Department of Behavioural Science and Health. The primary focus of his research is the impact of novel nicotine products, such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, and nicotine pouches, on cigarette smoking and public health. This includes individual-level interventions, population-level effects of policies, and global market changes. He has six years of teaching experience at University College London (UCL), on multiple modules for both undergraduate and master’s programmes, most notably leading a research methods module on the MSc Health Psychology.

Tessa Langley is a health economist specialising in the field of tobacco control. She graduated with an Honours degree in Economics and Economic History from the University of Warwick in 2007 and went on to work as a Junior Researcher at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Health Technology Assessment in Vienna and as a trainee in DG Health and Consumers at the European Commission in Brussels. She completed a Masters in Public Health at the University of Nottingham in 2009 before continuing to a research role, PhD and subsequently a lectureship at UoN. She currently holds the role of Associate Professor in Health Economics. The main focus of Tessa's research is on polices designed to reduce consumption of unhealthy commodities including tobacco, alcohol and foods high in fat, salt and sugar. Tessa has undertaken consultancy for the World Bank and Cancer Research UK and is a member of the Royal College of Physicians' Tobacco Advisory Group, which has published numerous reports on tobacco, smoking and e-cigarettes which have informed national policy in the UK. She is a Deputy Editor for the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research. She currently convenes two Masters in Public Health modules and teaches on a number of other modules. She supervises PhD students undertaking research in tobacco control and a range of other public health and health economics topics. Tessa is Deputy Director of Doctoral Programmes for the School of Medicine.

Dr. Benjamin Toll is a licensed clinical psychologist, the Oliver S. and Jennie R. Donaldson Charitable Trust Endowed Chair in Cancer Research, a Professor of Public Health Sciences and Psychiatry, the Vice Chair of Research for the Department of Public Health Sciences, and the Associate Director of Education and Training and Co-Director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program at MUSC Hollings Cancer Center, and Director of the MUSC Health Tobacco Treatment Program at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Toll has received grants from the US National Institutes of Health, including multiple R01 grants from the National Cancer Institute, and he is an author of over 165 peer-reviewed publications relating to nicotine and tobacco research, including several large clinical trials investigating smoking cessation published in first tier medical (e.g., Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Journal of Thoracic Oncology) and psychology journals (e.g., Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology) and several pilot clinical trials testing treatments for e-cigarette use. Moreover, Dr. Toll has published multiple papers in first tier medical journals using nationally representative data showing that most e-cigarette users plan to quit vaping (in JAMA Network Open, Tobacco Control) and that e-cigarettes are used more than cigarettes by 18-24 year-olds in the US (in JAMA Internal Medicine), forecasting a future in which e-cigarettes are the dominant tobacco product in the US. He has over 20 articles published in high-impact journals (Impact Factor > 10), including multiple Clinical Practice Guidelines and official policy statements from major medical associations. He has served as an author for the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) policy statement encouraging physicians to provide tobacco treatment for cancer patients, the American Thoracic Society's (ATS) Clinical Practice Guideline for treatment of tobacco dependent adults, and the AACR and American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) policy statement on Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS). Dr Toll is currently Co-Chairing a Clinical Practice Guideline for CHEST that will focus on treatment guidelines for hospitalized patients who smoke. He holds leadership positions in national associations relating to nicotine and tobacco research. Dr. Toll is the Immediate Past President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco (SRNT), the Chair of the AACR Cancer Centers Alliance (CCA) - Cancer Research Training Education Coordination (CRTEC) - Associate Director (AD) Steering Committee (CCA-CRTEC-AD), and a Member of the AACR Tobacco and Cancer Subcommittee.

Jasmine Khouja is a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Bath. Her work focuses on the causes and consequences of e-cigarette use as well as the potential impact that e-cigarette policy changes and prevention initiatives could have on adult smokers, adult vapers and young people. Using a range of methods (including novel methods in genetic epidemiology), she has explored a wide variety of topics, including the gateway hypothesis, possible health effects of vaping, and the potential impact of hypothetical e-liquid flavour bans. The overall aims of Jasmine’s research are to reduce health inequalities and to provide supporting evidence for policies and regulations which protect young people from harm and discourage smoking.

Louise Ross retired in 2018 as the manager of the Leicester, England, Stop Smoking Service, but continues to be active in tobacco harm reduction. The Leicester stop smoking service was the first in the country to go ‘ecig-friendly’ on No Smoking Day 2014.  She currently works as a clinical consultant for the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (NCSCT) where many stop-smoking and tobacco harm reduction resources can be found (www.ncsct.co.uk). Louise also works as the Stop Smoking Lead for the Smoke-Free app, which includes working with the expert team of advisors who offer live on-demand support to smokers who want to quit, whether this is with traditional products, vaping, novel nicotine products or no products at all.

Dr Sharrock is a Respiratory Consultant at Gateshead Health NHS FT and Clinical Lead for Tobacco Dependency within the NENC ICS. Ruth’s passion to treat tobacco dependency arises from seeing the harm caused by tobacco on the front line within the NHS. Ruth has worked across NENC to support Foundation Trusts to implement the Tobacco Dependency Treatment Services as per the NHS Long Term Plan. She contributes to many other work streams encouraging them to embed identification of and treatment for tobacco dependency as a core component of prevention and for it’s critical role in addressing Health Inequalities. Ruth is passionate about developing barrier-free support for those who smoke has worked alongside colleagues to deliver a region wide NHS staff smoking cessation offer that saw huge success, including the adoption of vapes as part of comprehensive offer of support.

Caitlin Robinson is a Project Manager working on behalf of the North East and North Cumbria ICS Smokefree NHS Workstream and has been project managing the NHS Staff Tobacco Dependency Offer since its inception in December 2019.   With a background of working in an NHS Research and Development team which included recruiting patients to smoking cessation studies across the acute and maternity setting, Caitlin is passionate about supporting people to quit smoking with the use of evidence-based interventions and in breaking down barriers to accessing stop smoking services.

Debbie is Theme Lead for Public Health and Multimorbidity in the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) South London, where she leads a programme of research evaluating tobacco dependence treatment pathways in local acute and mental health services. She is also collaborating with the NIHR Policy Research Unit in Addictions and leading a national evaluation of the additional £70 million investment in English stop smoking services. Her research focuses on groups often excluded from mainstream tobacco control, with a particular interest in the role of vaping in supporting quitting among high-prevalence smoking populations and in assessing its potential harms compared with smoking. Debbie has co-developed and evaluated tobacco dependence treatment pathways, staff training programmes, and smokefree and e-cigarette policies across acute, mental health, substance use and homeless services. She was a co-author of the Public Health England/Office of Health Improvement and Disparities e-cigarette evidence reviews (2018–2022). She also works with the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training to develop practitioner resources and serves as a Trustee for Action on Smoking and Health (England).

Dr John Robins is a research associate at the National Addiction Centre, King’s College London. He has worked as a substance use treatment and recovery practitioner across a range of settings including criminal justice, aftercare and outreach services. After coming to King’s College London in 2017 to undertake an MSc in Addictions he won the IoPPN prize scholarship, funding his PhD which examined the profile and treatment outcomes of suicidal psychiatric patients with Alcohol Use Disorder. John currently works in the Nicotine Research Group, funded by the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration, evaluating the implementation of tobacco dependence treatment across Southeast London and nationally. He is an advocate for harm reduction and identifying what ‘works for but for whom’ in addiction treatment, and is actively involved as a Trustee of an outreach and peer support charity close to his heart, Bringing Unity Back In the Community.

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text css=""]Professor Caitlin Notley leads the Public Health Research Department and the Addiction Research Group at the University of East Anglia. She is a social scientist, with research expertise in clinical trials and applied mixed methods. Her particular areas of expertise are tobacco smoking cessation, relapse prevention and harm reduction. She is Editor-in-Chief for the journal ‘Nicotine and Tobacco Research’, co-chairs the Cancer Research UK E-Cigarette Research Forum, and is also an author of the Cochrane ‘E-cigarettes for smoking cessation’ living systematic review.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The founder and managing director of ECigIntelligence, Tim is a UK-qualified attorney, having worked at the European Commission, BSkyB and Herbert Smith (an international law firm), AOL Europe, as director of public affairs at Betfair (IPO in 2010 valued at £1.5bn), and as a partner in a New York VC-funded start-up in the diamond sector. Tim holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the University of Law, London and a Masters in Geology from Oxford University.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy, UMass Amherst. She’s recently moved from the University of Oxford in the UK, where she retains an honorary contract. She is an expert in evidence synthesis and an editor for Cochrane. She leads multiple high impact Cochrane reviews in the areas of tobacco control and vaping, which have informed international policy and guidelines. She is passionate about the communication of complex information and data to inform policy and public action.

Prof Sarah Jackson is a Professorial Research Fellow in the UCL Alcohol and Tobacco Research Group. Her work focuses on monitoring population trends in smoking, vaping, and alcohol use and evaluating the effectiveness of smoking cessation aids, interventions, and policies at the individual and population level. To do this, she makes use of large, population-based datasets such as the Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study. She has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications relating to nicotine and tobacco, alcohol, and other health-related issues such as obesity and cancer. She has also contributed to influential reports on smoking, vaping, and health by the Royal College of Physicians. The contribution of her work has been recognised by several awards, including the Society for the Study of Addiction (SSA)'s Impact Prize and early career awards from the SSA (Fred Yates Prize) and UK Society for Behavioural Medicine. Prof Jackson holds leadership positions in associations relating to nicotine and tobacco research. She is Past President for Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco's European Chapter (SRNT Europe) and sits on Action on Smoking and Health’s advisory council. Dr Jackson is also a Senior Editor at the journal Addiction and Social Media Editor for Nicotine & Tobacco Research. She has served as a reviewer for numerous peer-reviewed publications, including large evidence reviews on nicotine vaping in England commissioned by Public Health England and the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

Ben Youdan started his career running the UK’s No Smoking Day Campaign in the early 2000’s before moving to Aotearoa New Zealand in 2006 to take on the role of ASH Director. He worked on the campaign for the Smokefree 2025 goal, and the policy steps to accompany it. In 2013 he took time out of tobacco control to work as the election campaign director for the New Zealand Green Party, and setting up a community led social change project in highly deprived communities in South Auckland. After working with these communities where vaping was disrupting generations of smoking, he returned to ASH with a particular interest in harm reduction as a tool to reduce inequity, and achieve Aotearoa New Zealand’s smokefree 2025 goal.  He currently splits his time between ASH, and as policy adviser to the New Zealand Heart Foundation.

Martin has recently retired as Tobacco Control Programme Lead for (OHID) The Office of Health Improvement and Disparities (previously Public Health England). He joined PHE in February after 7 years at Action on Smoking and Health. Martin has worked in Public Health since the mid 1980’s when he was involved in HIV prevention work. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health.