Professor Sharon Weldon is an internatioanlly renowned Professor of Healthcare Simulation and Workforce Development. She leads the Centre for Professional Workforce Development and the Simulation Group, and is Associate Head for Research and Knowledge Exchange in the School of Health Sciences within the University of Greenwich. She holds honorary positions with Imperial College London and Barts Health NHS Trust, collaborating on research and inputting on their programmes. Sharon is also a registered general nurse with experience in emergency and trauma paediatric operating theatres. Sharon has specialised as an infectious disease nurse working in a specialised unit whilst further specialising in TB and HIV. Her non-conforming application of simulation as a method has helped generate new systems of care, identified how care is perceived, tested new policies and interventions, and informed decision-making, all whilst engaging stakeholders not usually involved in such processes (patients, public, lay members). She has developed surgical team training based on empirically evidenced communication models and developed innovative simulated manikins with artists and industry-partners. She was part of the Imperial College’s Centre for Engagement and Simulation Science’s pioneering research on sequential (care pathway-based simulations) and distributed (low cost, portable simulation equiptment) simulation. This work has received funding from notable funders such as the Economic and Social Research Council, the Wellcome Trust, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council and won several national and international awards. Her body of work in relation to simulation challenges the wider industry fixation upon concepts such as fidelity and its relevance, questioning the established knowledge and its important in generation change and impact. She is an executive committee member for the Association for Simulated Practice in Healthcare (ASPiH), and has contributed to global white papers on simulation for patient safety, and is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Healthcare Simulation. More recently, she has been consulted by regulatory bodies on the use of simulation in practice and education which has subsequently resulted in regulatory changes. She has drawn on her research and knowledge of field to develop a unique Masters programme in Interprofessional Healthcare Simulation. Alongside this, she has developed team communication train-the-trainer pachages based on her empirical research of communication in operation theatres. This research received global acclaim for its identification of the affect that music playing, non-vocal responses and positioning has on communication amongst teams. This resulting training package has been used in both the UK and USA to train surgical teams and has changed policies around the playing of music during surgical procedures. She co-leads the Greenwich Learning and Simulation Centre (GLASC), which has won awards such as the Zenith Global Health, Clinical Education and Research Award, and Outstanding Team of the Year Award (2022), the University of Greenwich Outstanding Team of the Year Award (2023), and more recently is among the final four nationally to be shortlisted for the University Alliance Innovation Award (result pending Sept 2023).