Prof. Mark Mon-Williams

Professor Mark Mon-Williams (MMW) is a CHORAL Theme Lead for Improving Childhood Wellbeing. He holds a Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Leeds, is Professor of Psychology at the Bradford Institute of Health Research, and Professor of Vision Science at The Norwegian Centre for Vision. He is also a Turing Fellow at The Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s National data analytics and AI Centre). MMW held post-doctoral fellowships at the Universities of Edinburgh and Queensland before taking up his first faculty position at the University of St Andrews in 1999. He was appointed to a personal Chair at the University of Leeds in January 2009 and was Head (Chair) of the School of Psychology from 2011-2014. MMW was the Founder Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds– with Immersive Technologies being a major research priority for the University. MMW’s work on immersive technologies was headline news around the world in 1994 when he first showed the need to consider human physiology in the design of immersive technology systems. MMW is the University of Leeds Academic Director for the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research. He is also the Founder Director of the Centre of Applied Education Research (a partnership between the Universities of Leeds and Bradford together with the Department for Education, the Education Endowment Foundation, and the Bradford Local Authority) – a multidisciplinary Centre based at the Bradford Royal Infirmary. MMW leads the NHS Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire group responsible for ‘Healthy Schools, and is an executive member of the Born in Bradford project (a longitudinal cohort study following the lifelong development of 13,500+ children). His research is funded by a number of organisations including the EPSRC, EEF, MRC and ESRC. He is the lead for the ‘Healthy Learning’ theme within the UK’s ‘ActEarly’ Prevention Research Programme (funded by a consortium of 20 medical charities led by the UK’s Medical Research Council). He leads a team investigating the interactions between environmental and genetic risk factors for physical and mental health multimorbidity within the Medical Research Council funded LINC programme. MMW has responsibility for research quality and ensuring societal impact arises from research conducted within the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Leeds. MMW is committed to improving the health and education of children. He is a Founder Member of the Priestley Academy Trust (a multiple academy trust that includes the first school known to provide free meals to children and measure the impact on children’s health), and sits on the Bradford Opportunity Area partnership board. He has several advisory roles including being a Digital Futures Commissioner, being a member of the cross-Whitehall data Improvement Across Government committee, and leading a National project on the use of data to identify and support children with vulnerabilities.