For a woman with such a weighty task, Akers, 55, maintains a flinty composure as she faces committees of MPs and the ranks of lawyers at the Leveson inquiry – perhaps because she has had far more dangerous adversaries in the past.
Traditionally, health research commissioning has used face-to-face committees, mainly involving a range of people with relevant research expertise.
This paper draws on a recent study, undertaken by the authors that evaluated the commissioning of health research within the context of the NHS Health of Londoners Programme using virtual and face-to-face committees.
The 12 major health RECs in South Africa were surveyed using semi-structured questionnaires that investigated the composition and functions of each REC as well as the operational issues facing committees.
The remaining three maintained a traditional face-to-face committee approach.
As I said, Hillary sounded pretty confident of her ability to face the committee, even before the committee's motives were exposed by House Republicans.
County Clerk Dorothy Brown was the first to face the committee.
We will have to hope that she does better than this when Mark Thompson, the former director general of the BBC, returns to face her committee in the autumn.
The outcome of the meeting could portend a more difficult time for two other new obesity drugs that will face advisory committee hearings this year -- lorcaserin from Arena Pharmaceuticals and Contrave from Orexigen Therapeutics.
It may thus be tempting, and not only for reasons of pride, for Ms Yellen to pretend that not all that much has changed since the end of last year when she faces two committees on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday.
One of the key questions HMRC is likely to face from committee members is whether there was a decision, as Hodge put it on Monday, to "go easy" on HSBC.
