Public Health England (PHE) is an Executive Agency of the UK Department of Health (DH) and Social Care with responsibility for all aspects of public health in England. PHE is dedicated to protecting people’s health in the UK. This is achieved by providing impartial advice and authoritative information on health protection issues to the public, communities, professionals and government. Though an executive agency of government the advice provided is independent of government and this is enshrined within the code of conduct. DH-PHE combines public health and scientific expertise, research and emergency planning within the organisation. DH-PHE’s remit covers infectious disease, hazardous chemicals and radiation. The Centre for Radiation, Chemical & Environmental Hazards (CRCE) provides all the specialist research and advice on chemical and radiological issues within DH-PHE.

Role within GOLIATH: DH-PHE through its CRCE centre will be the co-lead for harmonisation with international governmental activities (WP8) and lead for the (pre) validation activities (WP7) and will be closely involved in WPs 1-6.

Dr Miriam Jacobs is currently Principal Toxicologist in the Toxicology Department at DH-PHE. She is the UK National Coordinator to the OECD Test Guideline Programme, and is a member of several OECD expert groups including AOP development, bureau member of the EDTA-AG, member of the QSAR Toolbox Management Group, chairing the OECD Validation Management Group Non–Animal (VMG-NA). She has worked on many OECD TGs in the last 15 years, both in vitro and in vivo, on behalf of the EC, and then UK, and led the OECD work on the first in vitro ED TG, TG 455. Such work includes project management development of OECD Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs), Performance Based TG’s (PBTGs), the OECD detailed review papers on metabolism and EDs (OECD 2008 and Jacobs et al 2008). She currently leads OECD work groups on IATA development for non genotoxic carcinogens (Jacobs et al., 2016, Paparella et al., 2017), reference substances for metabolism. Specific tasks in the project: (co)lead WP7 and WP8. Dr Jacobs will be closely involved with all WPs, and her scientific expertise will be specifically applied in WP7: (Pre-)validation and WP8: Integrated approach to Testing and Assessment (IATA) and international harmonisation. This will include expertise in consensus building in IATA development, management of submission of projects for consideration in the OECD test guideline work plan, AOP work plans, and IATA case study work plans, stakeholder participation and consensus building. With consolidation of the output of the project into prioritised assays for later TG development (WP7) the development of TG proposals, guidance, and IATA, and in ensuring consultation with the relevant international groups for regulatory acceptance and uptake.