Ritu Dhand was appointed Chief Scientific Officer, Springer Nature in January 2022. In this role, she is responsible for championing, promoting and driving editorial excellence across the Springer Nature Journals Portfolio. In particular she is a champion of open and inclusive publishing, protecting research integrity and using AI in a safe and ethical manner to support research publishing. Previous to this role, Ritu was the Vice President, Nature Journals where she oversaw the editorial strategy and management of Nature, Nature Communications, and the Nature Research and Review Journals. Ritu joined Nature in January 1999 as the cancer and signalling editor and was promoted to the Chief Biological Sciences Editor, Nature in 2001 where she had oversight over content and managed the Nature life Sciences team for 13 years. Prior to that, she spent over 10 years in cancer research, completing her PhD at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and University College London and and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto.