Professor Wason is a statistician with interests in methods for improving the efficiency of clinical trials through better design and analysis approaches. As well as working in methodology development James has a great interest in collaborating on real trials to apply new methods in practice.
He has been at Newcastle University since July 2017 and is currently part of the Biostatistics Research Group. Alongside James’ work with AI MULTIPLY, he started an NIHR Research Professorship in Dec 2021 which focuses on improving trials for immune-mediated inflammatory diseases.
Dr Megan Clinch is a Social Anthropologist, and undertook her doctoral research at the BIOS Centre, London School of Economics. She has conducted research at the Institute of Public Health at the University of Cambridge, the Faculty of Social Science at the Open University, and undertaken a visiting postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies at the University of Copenhagen.
She is currently the lead of the Global Public Health and Policy Unit, which delivers an intercalating and postgraduate Global Public Health degree and burgeoning programme of research and scholarship. She is also the Public Advisory Panel lead, a theme that crosscuts all Wolfson Institute of Population Health (WIPH) activity. In this role Megan is working with colleagues from across the WIPH, QMUL and local stakeholders to co-design a strategy for socially engaged research and teaching that aims to tackle health inequalities across East London
Megan will co-lead the ethnographic research with Professor Deborah Swinglehurst. This will include supporting processes of qualitative data collection/analysis, the design and delivery of 3 interdisciplinary reflexive workshops and the development of guidance for future interdisciplinary AI collaborations.
Dr Vanessa Apea is a consultant physician in Genito-urinary and HIV medicine and the clinical lead for Sexual Health at Barts Health NHS Trust. She is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London.
Vanessa is passionate about reducing inequalities in healthcare. She has made this a central focus of her clinical work and received an NHS 70 Windrush Award for her contribution to improving health equity. She has an established track record of exploring barriers to engagement in care in marginalised populations and has a particular research interest in participatory approaches and the intersection of race, gender and health.
She is a member of the London Fast-Track Cities Initiative stigma subgroup working to get London to zero HIV stigma. She is also the medical director of NAZ, a charity advocating for high quality sexual health and HIV support services for BAME communities.
Vanessa is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and a Fulbright scholar with a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University.
Dr Chris Plummer, as Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) for Health Informatics and consultant cardiologist, Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Great North Care Record, and Newcastle NIHR BRC Informatics Lead, will support the data and governance frameworks to access clinical data from patients across the North East and North Cumbria, data engineering and the application of digital technologies to support the delivery of patient benefits.
Dr Tom Lawton MBE is a Critical Care Consultant and Clinical Director of cBradford, with experience in routine data, AI safety and prediction modelling. He will supervise replication of AI-MULTIPLY clustering and AI algorithms in the cBradford dataset. He will also liaise with the Bradford Inequalities Research Unit and local PPI groups to facilitate interpretation and ensure findings have impact locally. This work will further synergise with the inequalities cross-cutting theme.
Ceri first became involved as a health services user representative in 2006 when she was pregnant with her first child. She quickly realised that if she was finding it virtually impossible to navigate local maternity services, others in her local community (Tower Hamlets, one of the most diverse and deprived London boroughs) with lower levels of literacy, English and confidence borne out a professional City career, must be finding it even harder. This led to her becoming involved with many PPI and related initiatives, becoming a trustee of a maternity service users’ charity and through this contributing to NICE guidance consultations, maternity transformation reviews and similar activities. Following a change in career to pursue her passion for health services which truly meet the needs of all, Ceri now leads Social Action for Health. The organisation’s mission to support people most affected by health inequalities to build the skills and confidence to make informed decisions for themselves, their families and their communities.
Social Action for Health (SAfH) are a community-based, health charity with over 30 years’ experience of working with the ethnically diverse and socioeconomically deprived population of east London. SAfH work with these diverse communities to empower people to improve their lives, with a major focus on health promotion and tackling inequalities. SAfH deliver NHS commissioned health programmes related to health and wellbeing, such as “Change for Good”, and focusing on communities who are under-served by existing services. SAfH also have a longstanding partnership with QMUL supporting community-focused research and public and patient involvement activities focusing on local health priorities such as chronic disease and multimorbidity
Adam is a Reader in Pharmaceutical Public Health in the School of Pharmacy at Newcastle University. He has been a registered pharmacist for the last 16 years and still works in patient-facing roles across both community and hospital settings.
His research is highly interdisciplinary and focuses on optimising medicines to reduce inappropriate polypharmacy in older people. He leads a number of funded studies in this area. He has also published extensively in the area of deprescribing, and is currently a steering group member of EDeN, the English Deprescribing Network. Adam is an experienced researcher, and sits on several research committees, including those for the NIHR RfPB and HTA programmes.
Adam is a co-applicant on the AI-MULTIPLY consortium, and will provide expertise in the area of polypharmacy and inappropriate prescribing.
Sarah is Clinical Senior Lecturer in Diabetes at the Centre for Primary Care and Public Health at Queen Mary University London. She studied medicine at University College London, and undertook specialist and academic training in Diabetes and Endocrinology in east London. She was an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, and was awarded an MRC Clinical Training Fellowship for her PhD. Prior to completing her specialist clinical training, she was an NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and she then returned to east London to take up her current clinical and academic role. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on type 2 diabetes and multimorbidity in high risk populations, such as ethnic minority groups and women with gestational diabetes.
Sarah works as a Consultant in Diabetes at Barts Health NHS Trust, specialising in type 1 diabetes (including pump therapy), complex type 2 diabetes and diabetes in pregnancy.
Nick Reynolds is Professor of Dermatology and Director of Diagnostics at Newcastle University and a practising clinician at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
He co-leads the consortium with Mike Barnes, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).
Nick has gained wide leadership experience through high-level roles in the University, NHS, and across several national inter-disciplinary consortia. He has worked extensively with real-life longitudinal and multimorbidity data and has a strong interest in systems biology models and artificial intelligence, working closely with computational scientists and the life science industry (e.g. BADBIR, PSORT, Rosetrees, A-Star).
He has a strong commitment to training and involving patients and the public in research from its initiation (e.g. UK TREND, PSORT, AiM project). In 2019, he was selected as a NIHR Senior Investigator.
Daniel is a postdoctoral researcher, and holds a School For Primary Care Research (SPCR) launching fellowship. He is a member of the Ageing and Geroscience theme, and my research interests are frailty and multiple long-term conditions, end of life and palliative care, and health inequalities.
He began his career working in Newcastle’s Translational and Clinical Research Institute researching novel technological devices to objectively measure physical activity and social interaction in people with late life depression. During this period he also collaborated with colleagues in Open Lab and the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre. In 2022 he took a research post at Queen Mary University London working alongside Dr Sarah FinerDr Sarah Finer.
Recently, he has been awarded funding by the NIHR as part of the Infrastructure Short Placement Award for Research Collaboration (SPARC), and will be attending the Transdisciplinary Understanding and Training on Research in Primary Health Care (TUTOR-PHC) program in 2020.
Daniel has an interest in involving patients and public effectively in research and is a member of the PPIE group within the project.
Born in Dunfermline, Alastair moved to Newcastle University to become Senior Lecturer in Pathology and Honorary Consultant Histopathologist. In 2005 he became Dean of Clinical Medicine.
Alastair maintains a strong research interest in liver disease and is Editor in Chief of the principal international text book on hepatopathology, MacSween’s Pathology of the Liver, now into its 7th edition. In addition, I was Editor in Chief of the peer reviewed journal, Histopathology for 7 years. I have > 20000 citations and an H index of 71.
He has undertaken consultancy work for pharmaceutical companies but was delighted to have been appointed to the new and exciting post of Professor of Precision and Molecular Pathology at Newcastle University from November 2019.
He is now Director of NovoPath (MRC/EPSRC Molecular Pathology Node) and Theme Lead for Precision Medicine, Genomics and Informatics. In addition he is Vice Chair of the Innovation Board of Integrated Covid Hub North East.
