Sarah Cooney is a science engagement specialist focusing on harm reduction and science communication, now running her own consultancy. Prior to this, she spent nearly 12 years at British American Tobacco, establishing the science engagement and communication capability at BAT R&D, to better communicate the science behind less-risky nicotine products to regulatory and general audiences. She drove a real change in BAT’s publishing strategy and created the visitor engagement programme, science exhibition and a series of award-winning science reports – which showcased the company’s reduced risk product research in an accessible way. Prior to BAT, she held various editorial and publishing roles at Nature, Elsevier and BioMedCentral. She holds a BSc in genetics and an MSc in plant genetics both from the University of Toronto, and her research has been published in Science. She is also dedicated to choral singing!

Harry Shapiro is Director of DrugWise – an online drug information service - and Managing Editor of DS Daily - the daily online drug, alcohol and tobacco news service. He has worked in the drugs field for over 40 years, first with the Institute for the Study of Drug Dependence and then from 2000 with DrugScope where he was Director of Communications until the charity folded in 2015.

Since 2015, he has been working with Knowledge-Action-Change promoting public health through harm reduction. He is the author and Executive Editor of the Global State of Tobacco Harm Reduction report, contributes a blog to Nicotine Science and Policy and is one of KAC’s media spokespeople.