Sheila JJ Heymans is Executive Director of the European Marine Board, Professor in Ecosystem Modelling at the Highlands and Islands in Scotland, and a Fellow of the Royal Society for Biology in the UK. She has 30 years of experience in research on the environmental impacts of ecosystem change. Her main science focus has been the social, economic, and ecological impacts of fishing in the world’s oceans, and the resilience of these ecosystems to fishing and environmental change.

Sheila is Vice-Chair of the EOOS Steering Group, sits on the Ecopath Consortium Board, on the External Expert Identification Committee of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, and on the Advisory Boards of various EU projects including Blue Cloud 2026, NECCTON, among others. She is on the Editorial Board of the third UNESCO-IOC Global Ocean Science Report. She was a lead author on the IPBES chapter: “Policy support tools and methodologies for scenario analysis and modelling of biodiversity and ecosystem services”. Sheila is the editor of EMB Policy documents and her publications are here.