Listen to our new podcast with CLOSER, as we sit down with our expert panel to explore how research data can influence Government policies to improve people's lives.

Our panelists include: Steve McEachern, Director of the UK Data Service, Rob Davies, Head of Policy and Dialogue at CLOSER, Dr Emily Marchant, Lecturer at Swansea University and Natasha Mutebi, Social Sciences Lead at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Episode 2 - our experts showcase examples of where research data has been used to guide policymaking, dissect the challenges that researchers face in mobilising their research, and explain how UK Parliament assesses research to decide what evidence to use.

Please also dig deeper into the work of CLOSER with our Impact team's blog about how the organisation provides specialist support for researchers: Grow your policy impact through CLOSER’s Policy Surgeries.

Listen to our new podcast with CLOSER, as we sit down with our expert panel to explore how research data can influence Government policies to improve people's lives.

Our panelists include: Dr Steve McEachern, Director of the UK Data Service, Rob Davies, Head of Policy and Dialogue at CLOSER, Dr Emily Marchant, Lecturer at Swansea University and Natasha Mutebi, Social Sciences Lead at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology.

Episode 1 - we discuss how to raise awareness of research data among policymakers so it can be used to guide better decisions, with our panel sharing their insights into how researchers can connect with policymakers and effectively communicate their findings for policy audiences.

Please also dig deeper into the work of CLOSER with our Impact team's blog about how the organisation provides specialist support for researchers: Grow your policy impact through CLOSER’s Policy Surgeries.

This is a teaser clip about our new collaborative podcast coming soon, between CLOSER and the UK Data Service.

It will feature interviews with leaders from within the data sector in the UK, talking about how research can be used effectively to influence critical policy decisions taken by the Government.

This is the second podcast in our series about the new dynamic synthetic datasets recently released into the UK Data Service's collection by the SIPHER Consortium, which created a digital twin of the adult population of England, Scotland and Wales using research from Understanding Society and the UK census data.

In our first podcast, Nik Lomax, the SIPHER Consortium Co-Lead on Data & System Monitoring and Policy Microsimulation, who is also the Professor of Population Geography at the University of Leeds, talked about how the SIPHER Synthetic Population datasets can be applied to influence future Government polices to improve people's lives.

In this podcast, Nik tells us more about the overall purpose and objectives of the SIPHER Consortium. Interview by Rodney Appleyard, Communications and Stakeholder Manager for the UK Data Service.

Research from Understanding Society and UK Census data has been used to create a dataset that mimics the adult population in England, Scotland, and Wales, allowing researchers to model the potential impact of health interventions and policies. This dataset is now available in the UK Data Service’s collection.

Nik Lomax, the SIPHER Consortium Co-Lead on Data & System Monitoring and Policy Microsimulation, who is also the Professor of Population Geography at the University of Leeds, talks to us about how the process of creating this synthetic dataset works.

This is the first podcast in our series about these datasets and the SIPHER Consortium. Interview by Rodney Appleyard, Communications and Stakeholder Manager for the UK Data Service.

Episode 3

Rodney Appleyard, UK Data Service and Jennie Blows, CLOSER interview Professor Jennifer Symonds, Director of CLOSER, Robin Flaig, Co-Director of the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and Chief Operations Officer for Generation Scotland, and Dr Nigel de Noronha, Research Associate at the University of Manchester, about how data can protect us in the emerging world of AI and more convincing fake news.

Episode 2

Rodney Appleyard, UK Data Service and Jennie Blows, CLOSER, interview Professor Jennifer Symonds, interview Director of CLOSER, Robin Flaig, Co-Director of the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and Chief Operations Officer for Generation Scotland, and Dr Nigel de Noronha, Research Associate at the University of Manchester, about the impact of data and how in their own experiences, data has made a difference to the world.

Episode 1

Rodney Appleyard, UK Data Service and Jennie Blows, CLOSER, interview Professor Jennifer Symonds, Director of CLOSER, Robin Flaig, Co-Director of the UK Longitudinal Linkage Collaboration and Chief Operations Officer for Generation Scotland, and Dr Nigel de Noronha, Research Associate at the University of Manchester, about their personal data journeys and what they have found so rewarding about working with data.