Meet the research team

Dr Briony Banks is a Senior Research Scientist who is passionate about applying rigorous research methods to improve education practice. She has a background in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, and is interested in how these apply to education and the science of learning. Briony has extensive expertise in quantitative analysis, particularly systematic reviews and meta-analysis and experimental research methods. She received her PhD in psychology from the University of Manchester and holds an MSc in neuroscience, language and communication from UCL. Her research has been published in high impact journals such as Behaviour Research Methods, the European Journal of Teacher Education, Journal of Experimental Psychology and Transactions of the Royal Society. Since joining Ambition she has led two simulator experiments to improve teacher professional development, a systematic review of effective teaching assistant-led interventions and a meta-analysis of dual coding (use of visuals) in teaching.

Jennifer Curran is a Research Scientist at Ambition Institute. She is currently completing an EdD at Northumbria University looking at how teachers experience Master’s level study. Jen started teaching in 2013, taught across the primary age range and held senior leadership roles. Jen has also designed teacher training for Teach First. She delivered programmes for Ambition Institute as a tutor, including NPQs, ITT and the Master’s in Expert Teaching. Jen is an Associate Lecturer at Northumbria University, working as a link tutor on placement modules. As a research scientist at Ambition, Jen has worked on a meta-analysis of dual coding (use of visuals) in teaching, a systematic review of effective teaching assistant-led interventions, and two simulator experiments. Jen is passionate about how to support teachers to use our research, including drafting our ‘summary for educators’ documents, speaking at events such as Research Ed and Festival of Education, and writing blogs and articles.

Dr Stefanie Meliss is a Senior Research Scientist at Ambition Institute. She holds a PhD in neuroscience and has over ten years’ experience in research and educational data science. She has a strong track record of working with diverse datasets – spanning MRI, experimental, survey, and large-scale longitudinal studies – applying advanced quantitative methods, statistical modelling, and machine learning. Stef is highly proficient in R, using it for data wrangling, analysis, and visualisation. She has led projects on curiosity-driven learning, published open datasets in line with FAIR and GDPR standards, and contributed to studies on educational interventions and teaching effectiveness. Her experience includes automating data workflows, developing analytical pipelines, and supporting programme evaluation. Most recently, Stef has engineered and integrated government datasets on school performance, attendance, attainment, and workforce, enabling high-quality, actionable insights for schools and policymakers.

Sam is the Research Lead at Ambition. He is a quantitative education researcher, interested in how teachers gain expertise and the design of professional development aimed at accelerating this process. Sam received his doctorate in education from UCL in 2018 and has published research in journals including American Educational Research Journal, Learning and Instruction, and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. Alongside this, Sam also works at UCL Institute of Education. He is the author of over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles on subjects including effective teacher professional development and effective teaching. Sam has conducted experimental and non-experimental evaluations of teacher PD interventions, has published journal articles on the conduct and interpretation of randomised controlled trials in education, and lectures on policy evaluation methods at UCL.

Clare Routledge is a Research Associate at Ambition Institute and a doctoral candidate at UCL. Clare is a qualified primary teacher and has a master’s degree in Education Policy and Analysis from Harvard. In her current role at Ambition, she is working on a Nuffield-funded project investigating retention of female teachers in their 30s. She previously co-authored a study examining why people choose to enter and exit the teaching profession (Sims, Lowes-Belk & Routledge, 2025) and a systematic review of teaching assistant interventions (Banks et al., 2025). She has previously completed a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship at BBC R&D, where she project managed the delivery of research reports, stakeholder engagement events, and communications outputs.