Headshot of Heather, a white middle-aged woman with shoulder-length, dark straight hair and tortoisehell glasses. She has a big smile and is wearing a grey jumper with black stars on.

Dr Heather Turner

Principal Research Software Engineer
Pronouns: she/her

I am a Principal Research Software Engineer (RSE) in Advanced Research Computing, University of Birmingham. I lead the project Enabling the Next Generation of Contributors to R (blog post, repo) and manage software development projects conducted by RSEs.

My specialism is R programming. I joined the R Core Team in March 2026 and maintain several open source R packages. I am a leader in R community management and engagement; my roles include R Foundation board member, R Contribution Working Group chair and R Forwards taskforce chair.

I have over twenty years experience gained from academia, industry and freelance consultancy, in providing statistical and programming support to investigators in statistics, social science, drug discovery, bioinformatics and agriculture.