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 leads Ambition’s research alongside his role at the UCL Institute of Education, where he is a quantitative education researcher. Sam has been published in journals including Learning and Instruction; the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness; and American Educational Research Journal.