Discover STM

Our People

The people behind the work.

A dedicated group of individuals who bring curiosity, craft, and care to everything we do.

In addition to our core operations team, we work with a network of 40 subject editors and specialist contributors accross medicine, lifescince and clinical research.

Lesley C Anson

Lesley C Anson

Editorial Director

Lesley C. Anson is an editorial professional with over 28 years of experience at the highest levels of academic publishing. She served as a Senior Editor at Nature before becoming the Founding Chief Editor of Nature Communications — one of the world's leading multidisciplinary research journals — where she built an editorial team of 40 and led the strategic development of the nascent journal. This editorial expertise, combined with a scientific background spanning physiology, neuroscience, biophysics, and molecular pharmacology, allows her to oversee research quality and peer review with authority. At Discover STM Publishing Ltd, Dr. Anson leverages her experience to help journal editors uphold the highest editorial standards across our portfolio.

Adnan M Usmani

Adnan M Usmani

Director of Operations (Editorial & Publishing Services)

Adnan Mahmood Usmani is the Director of Operations at Discover STM Publishing Ltd, bringing a background that spans scholarly publishing, clinical research, and academic programme management. He previously served as a Research Associate at the College of Medicine, King Saud University, where he also supervised fellowship trainee programmes — giving him direct insight into the research environment that many of Discover STM's journal editors and authors work within. His specialisations in clinical research, epidemiology, and public health inform the way the company approaches editorial standards, manuscript quality, and peer review integrity. Adnan oversees the end-to-end publishing workflow across all journals under management, ensuring that every stage — from submission to publication — is handled with consistency, rigour, and care.