Marcus Munafo

Marcus Munafò is Professor of Biological Psychology at the University of Bristol and MRC Investigator in the MRCIntegrative Epidemiology Unit. His primary research focuses on identifying and understanding the causal pathways between health behaviours and both physical and mental health outcomes, using a range of epidemiological causal inference methods, human laboratory studies, and field trials. He also has a long standing interest in the factors that contribute to the robustness of research findings, and in 2019 co-founded the UK Reproducibility Network (www.ukrn.org). This was recently was awarded funding by Research England to embed open research practices across UK institutions. In 2021 he gave oral evidence to the UK Parliament Science and Technology Committee inquiry on research reproducibility, on behalf of UKRN, and in 2022 he was appointed Associated Pro Vice Chancellor for Research Culture at the University of Bristol.

About Dorothy:

“Dorothy has been a colleague and friend for several years, and was absolutely integral to our efforts to found what became known as UKRN. She helped organise the 2015 meeting held by the Academy of Medical Sciences meeting to discuss the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research that brought the issue to the attention of major funders in the UK, and highlighted the need for action. After this meeting, Dorothy patiently and relentlessly lobbied funders, arguing that change was needed and that this change needed to come from the research community itself. Following these efforts, we gained the support of several major funders and were able to launch UKRN in 2019, with Dorothy serving as Chair of our Advisory Board until 2021. She has not only been instrumental in helping to establish UKRN, but also inspirational – both to myself and to many colleagues across disciplines and at all career stages”.