Professor Sheila Rowan holds the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, UK and since 2009, is Director of its Institute for Gravitational Research. She has held research positions split between Stanford University and Glasgow before returning full time to a Faculty position in Glasgow in 2003.

She was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of London in 2018 and the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2008, and awarded Fellowship of the American Physical Society in 2012. She received the Hoyle Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics in 2016 in recognition of her pioneering research on aspects of the opto-mechanical technology of gravitational wave observatories, which utilise ultra-low noise precision interferometric sensing. In 2016 she was seconded (part-time) to be Chief Scientific Advisor to the Scottish Government, is the UK CSA Champion for Quantum Technologies and the President Elect of the UK Institute of Physics