Dr Sarah Jackson is a Principal Research Fellow within the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London. Her work focuses on monitoring population trends in smoking behaviour and evaluating the effectiveness of smoking cessation aids and interventions on an individual and population level. She has extensive research experience, with over 150 publications. She has received awards from the Society for the Study of Addiction in recognition of her outstanding contribution to research and practice in the addictions field and to tobacco control policy. She sits on Action on Smoking and Health’s advisory council and is a Senior Editor at the journal Addiction.

Dr Amanda Farley is an Associate Professor in Public Health and Epidemiology working in the Department of Applied Health Sciences. She has 20 years’ experience of research within the field of public health and teaches epidemiology and research methods on the masters in public health (MPH), undergraduate medical sciences (BMedSc) and undergraduate medicine degree (MBChB) programmes. Amanda is Head of Post Graduate Research (PGR) for the Department of Applied Health Sciences overseeing PhD, MD and MSc by research programmes within the department.

Amanda’s research interests centre on the development/ testing of interventions to support people to change behaviours that harm health, and quantification of the effects of behaviour change. In particular, she has significant expertise and track record in the field of tobacco addiction.  Amanda is experienced in conducting systematic reviews, feasibility and full-scale trials and has been lead/co-applicant of funding awarded from the NIHR, MRC and CRUK for work within these fields.

Dr Sharon Cox is a Principal Research Fellow within the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London. Collectively, she has over 15 years’ experience within substance use treatment and research. Her research focuses on tobacco dependence and cessation amongst people living with severe, and often unchanging, health and social needs. She has a special interest in tobacco harm reduction, specifically investigating how quitting smoking using non-combustible nicotine products can improve health outcomes and quality of life in people experiencing homelessness and those with other drug dependences.

Stephanie Klosterhalfen is a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of General Practice at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. She holds an M.Sc. in Health Economics and a Doctorate in Public Health. With several years of experience in nicotine and tobacco research, she coordinates the German Study on Tobacco Use (DEBRA), a nationwide survey on smoking behaviour in Germany. Her research focuses particularly on shisha consumption, with a special interest in its use among adolescents and young adults.

Dr Bar Zeev is a Public Health Physician and Behavioural Scientist. She is a Senior Lecturer (Tenure Track) at the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She has extensive research experience, with over $1.78M in grants, and over 70 publications. Her research focuses on understanding influences on tobacco use and improving smoking cessation outcomes in disadvantaged populations, and specifically among pregnant women. In the last few years, she has filled leadership roles in the field of Tobacco control in Israel, as the Chair of the Israel Medical Association for Smoking Cessation and Prevention. Together with a strong Tobacco Control Coalition, she has advocated successfully for extensive tobacco control legislation that went into effect in 2020 and included an advertisement ban, a point-of-sale display ban and plain packaging, effective for all tobacco and nicotine products. 

Floor van den Brand is assistant professor at the Department of Family Medicine at Maastricht University. Her research interest lies in behavioral and policy interventions for stimulating smoking cessation in individuals with a lower socioeconomic position. She conducts research on implementing smoking cessation group trainings with financial incentives targeting people with a lower socioeconomic position and is studying the effects of a tobacco sales ban in supermarkets on youth and adults from disadvantaged neighborhoods.  

Nicola Lindson is a University Research Lecturer and Managing Editor of the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group employed in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences (NDPCHS), University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Behavioural Medicine from the University of Birmingham in 2012. Nicola serves as an Associate Editor for the journal Addiction and is a Chartered Psychologist, with an international reputation in research on nicotine addiction and smoking cessation. With a h-index of 20, she has publications in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Altmetric score 2468), the BMJ, JAMA, Thorax, and the Cochrane Library. Nicola has secured funding for and led large multi-centre RCTs, a research prioritization project engaging multiple stakeholder groups, and most recently an NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme Grant. Her research has contributed to a significant number of international healthcare guidelines, as well as informing NIHR and French National Cancer Institute funding priorities and national smoking cessation training and guidance (delivered by the NCSCT). She contributes to teaching both the undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum at the University of Oxford, is employed as an Associate Lecturer for Cochrane UK, and serves as a college advisor and research member of the common room at Kellogg College, University of Oxford.

Felix is a Professor of Health Psychology within the School of Health Sciences, University of East Anglia, Visiting Senior Researcher at the Behavioural Science Group, University of Cambridge, and Honorary Associate Professor within the Division of Primary Care, University of Nottingham. He has a key research interest in the development and evaluation of mobile phone interventions to promote and support health behaviour change (mHealth), particularly smoking cessation.