📋 Tender Overview
30 September 2026 This autumn sees two new key appointments at UK Research and Innovation helping to deliver our mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.
Chief Financial Officer
Our new Chief Financial Officer (CFO) will be Tom Taylor who joins the organisation on 20 October.
Tom Taylor
As well as being a member of the Executive Committee, Tom will be on the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Board.
Tom brings a wealth of experience from across government finance and public administration.
Tom was CFO in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy between 2017 and 2023.
Since 2023 Tom has been CFO at the Office for National Statistics, where he has led corporate services across several sites in the UK.
Chief Programme Officer
The second appointment is Einav Ben-Yehuda who will join our Executive Committee towards the end of November in a new role of Chief Programme Officer.
Einav Ben-Yehuda
Einav is currently the Chief Commercial Officer for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with an exceptional track record of large-scale leadership and transformation across a range of sectors, including:
life sciences
health
construction
housing
retail
banking
The new Chief Programme Officer will play a critical leadership role in transforming UKRIs ability to deliver major programmes effectively, at pace and at scale.
Chief Development Officer
In addition to these roles, a new Chief Development Officer (CDO) role has been established.
Simon Hepworth from Research England takes up this post on an interim basis, as well as keeping his substantive role as Knowledge Exchange Director in Research England.
The CDO will serve as a strategic leader and principal decision-maker for UKRIs development, commercial, and partnership activities.
The CDO will be accountable for ensuring the organisation leverages its assets, intellectual property, and partnerships to deliver maximum national benefit and economic impact.
A pivotal time
UKRI Chief Executive Professor Sir Ian Chapman said:
Tom and Einav are joining UKRI at a pivotal time as we put our new five-year strategy into action and accelerate our mission to advance knowledge, improve lives and drive growth.
I look forward to working closely with them both, and with Simon, whose leadership of UKRIs commercial interests will help maximise the impact and value created from the UKs world-class research and innovation.
