Graham Steel has been actively involved in Patient Advocacy work in his spare time since 2001. Graham acted as Vice-Chairman for a UK Charity, the Human BSE Foundation 2001 – 2005 and then as Information Resource Manager for the CJD International Support Alliance (CJDISA) 2005 – 2007. More recently, his activities have been focused mainly on Neurodegenerative conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease. He is also involved in advocating for Open Access/Science/Data and acts in advisory capacities to the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Public Library of Science (PLoS) and most recently, Digital Science.