Dr Uma Natarajan is a Research Manager at CRPP. She has several years of experience in research and managerial roles in Singapore and the United States, and her interests include education policy, teacher education, STEM and integrating technology in education. She was a Graduate Research Associate in the early years of CRPP (2004-2007) and rejoined NIE to manage the meriSTEM centre after her return from the United States.

Dr Natarajan has contributed to policy research at the Center for Education Policy Research (CEPR) and was a teaching fellow for the Masters Programme at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She also has extensive experience working for international projects in institutions like the Asian Development Bank, UNIESCO, Microsoft and the HEAD Foundation.

Ms Pauline Cassidy Appleyard is the Project Manager of the CORE Research Programme (2004-present), a multi-million-dollar, government-funded, large-scale baseline suite of empirical studies focusing on Singaporean classroom pedagogies. Her role includes budget creation, managing project finances, progress reporting and all aspects surrounding team management and development. In parallel with her project manager role, she manages the practical and logistical aspects involved in running the physical space in which CRPP is housed.

Ms Appleyard moved to Singapore in 2002 and after completing her Masters degree with Curtin University of Technology, Australia. She became a Project Manager with CRPP in 2004 where she has assisted multiple principal investigators with their research projects. Between 2010 and 2020, she worked at James Cook University (Singapore) and Newcastle University (Singapore), as well as in Australia and the United Kingdom, where she managed research projects and postgraduate students. In 2020, Ms Appleyard returned to work in CRPP.