After completing her BSc in Experimental Psychology and MSc in Health Psychology, Dr Emma Beard was awarded her PhD in 2011 from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London (UCL). She subsequently undertook an MSc in Medical Statistics and was awarded Graduate Statistician Status in 2014. The same year she was awarded a fellowship from the NIHR SPHR. She subsequently worked as a Senior and Principal Research Fellow across two departments (Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology and Behavioural Science and Health) at UCL. In 2022, she was appointed as a Lecturer in Statistics for the Masters in Public Health and also currently teaches across a number of MSc and BSc courses in psychology and behavioural science. Dr Emma Beard is a deputy statistics and methodology advisor for Addiction. Dr Emma Beard has previosuly sat on several boards at the British Psychology Society (BPS), which acts as a representative body for psychology and psychologists in the UK. She played a role in the establishment of the Alcohol Toolkit Study, a major national alcohol use surveillance survey which is a collaboration between seven different institutions. Dr Emma Beard has provided expert input and advice to policy makers such as the All Party Parliamentary Groups, Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID), Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).