SSAC Chair
Professor Maggie Gill, OBE, FRSE is an emeritus Professor in the School of Biology, University of Aberdeen. From 2014 to 2019 Maggie was Chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council of the CGIAR (a consortium of international agricultural research centres). She currently chairs an EU Think Tank for the project Fit4Food 2030 and the Science Advisory Panel of the New Zealand Government’s Our Land and Water National Challenge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.
Maggie was Chief Scientific Advisor for the Environment and Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government from 2006 to 2011, after serving as CEO and Research Director of the Macaulay Institute (one of the predecessors of the James Hutton Institute). She went to the Macaulay after four years as CEO of Natural Resources International Ltd, a company owned by four universities which was spun out of the privatisation of the Natural Resources Institute (originally part of the UK Government Overseas Development Administration).
Maggie (an agricultural science graduate of Edinburgh University), has been a researcher (initially in animal nutrition), managed research programmes and advised governments on research, broadening her expertise to the interactions between food systems, society and the environment. She is passionate about bringing the policy and science communities closer together to help accelerate the use of knowledge in helping to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.
Professor Gill joined the SSAC on 1 December 2019 and stepped down on 30 November 2023.
