Tom Ziessen is Senior National Programmes Adviser at the Wellcome Trust. This means managing grant funding schemes to support public exploration of ideas around science, health and medicine. He was awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship in 2010 to explore brain-scanning based lie detection in India and the USA and made a short documentary exploring attempts to introduce lie detection in US courts in 2011, which has been used to stimulate debate on the topic. Prior to joining the Trust Tom gained a PhD in Biochemistry, studying female sexual arousal and worked at the Science Museum on public engagement projects connecting scientists, the public and policy-makers.