Danny McAuley is a Consultant and Professor in Intensive Care Medicine at the Regional Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Queen’s University of Belfast. He undertook his training in Belfast, Birmingham, London and San Francisco. He is Programme Director for the MRC/NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) programme. He has several research interests including Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and clinical trials.

Holly is the national lead overseeing the operations of the NIHR Associate Principal Investigator (PI) Scheme. With a focus on providing practical experience for healthcare professionals embarking on their research careers, the six month in-work training opportunity is a vital initiative within the NIHR network. Leading a dynamic team, Holly collaborates closely with key stakeholders to ensure the successful nationwide implementation of the programme.

With a strong foundation in the field, Holly boasts more than a decade of valuable research experience. Previously, she has contributed significantly to the Yorkshire and Humber NIHR Local Clinical Research Network and served as an integral part of the Surgical Research team at Leeds Teaching Hospitals. Beyond her research commitments, Holly serves as a UK delegate to UN Women, where her advocacy and dedication to gender equality shine brightly.

Holly is currently based at the NIHR CRNCC Leeds office, situated at 21 Queen Street. For enquiries or to connect with her, you're welcome to reach out via the team inbox at associatepischeme@nihr.ac.uk.

MBE PhD FRCSLT

Roganie is a consultant Clinical-Academic Speech & Language Therapist based at University College London Hospital and an Associate Professor at UCL Head & Neck Academic Centre, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science.

She worked as a clinician in South Africa and the UK for more than 20 years prior to embarking on a clinical research career. Roganie has successfully obtained four NIHR/NIHR infrastructure fellowships allowing her to complete a PhD in Behavioural Science & Health and to forge a clinical academic career focussing on dysphagia interventions in head and neck cancer.

Roganie is currently chief investigator for the SIP SMART2 multicentre pilot trial investigating dysphagia prehabilitation in people newly diagnosed with head and neck cancer. During the pandemic, she co-led a national audit of laryngectomy services at 26 NHS sites. She has published widely in her field and presented her work nationally and internationally. She works closely with her professional body (RCSLT) in developing clinical guidelines and undertakes teaching and training at undergraduate and post-graduate level across healthcare professional groups. She mentors and supervises NIHR trainees from internship to doctoral and early post-doctoral level and currently chairs the NIHR Speech Therapy in ENT Group (STENT). Roganie received an MBE in the 2021 New Year’s Honours List for services to Speech & Language Therapy.

Florence Cook is a Head and Neck Oncology Dietitian at University College London Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. Florence was one of the first allied health professionals to be accredited as an Associate Principal Investigator, completing her 6-month tenure on the SIP SMART2 swallowing prehabilitation trial from April 2022 to November 2022. Florence has showcased the research skills that can be acquired from undertaking the scheme against a well-known researcher development framework (Vitae RDF). This was published in Advances in Communication and Swallowing (DOI: https://doi.org/10.3233/acs-220021) and demonstrated development opportunities across all RDF domains.

Laura Clifton-Hadley is an Associate Director of Clinical Operations at Bristol Myers Squibb and is based in the UK.  She studied microbiology and virology at the University of Warwick before doing a microbiology PhD at the University of Reading.  Her interest in clinical trials stemmed from a 1-hour lecture during her second year of university.  She first worked at the University of Birmingham and then at University College London (UCL) where she was the trials group lead for the Haematology and Brain studies. During her time at UCL she set up a number of advanced therapy/CAR T cell studies.  She first got involved in the Associate PI scheme in the academic sector, registering several of their Investigator initiated trials onto the portfolio.  At Bristol Myers Squibb she oversees the portfolio of trials (cross therapeutic areas) in the UK and Ireland, essentially ensuring that the studies run compliantly to time and target.  As one of the first companies to join the Associate PI pilot scheme for the commercial sector, she ensured that a range of studies were registered onto the pilot, provided training internally and acts as the Associate PI champion locally. 

I am Professor of Behavioural Medicine at the University of Leicester and a primary care pharmacist. I lead the incubator for pharmacy professionals that starts in January 2024.

My mission is to support NHS practitioners to apply behavioural science to implement positive change with a particular focus on addressing medicine optimisation challenges. Two key strands of this work are medication adherence and deprescribing. I led the design of the IMAB-Q which is funded by the NIHR to be developed into a service embedded into structured medication reviews to support primary care teams to work with patients to identify and address barriers to adherence. I also led development of the opioid toolkit which is a theory and evidence-based approach to system level change that equips practitioners to work with patients to taper opioids when the chance of harm outweighs benefit. The opioid toolkit is currently being implemented in one ICB and has been embedded across many systems globally. I am also the lead researcher of CHARMER which is an England-wide trial to test a hospital deprescribing intervention.

I am currently developing a training and mentoring programme for NHS practitioners to equip them with the skills and confidence to apply behavioural science to their identified medicines optimisation challenges.

Senior Trial Manager

Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit

A Senior Trial Manager with over 10 years' experience in clinical research. Starting his research career as a scientist in respiratory medicine, Garry joined Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit (NCTU) as a Trial Coordinator in 2014. Since joining NCTU, he has helped to deliver a number of multi-centre randomised controlled trials across a range of therapeutic areas, gaining expertise across the entire life-cycle of clinical trials. In addition to his role as a Senior Trial Manager, Garry has developed a passion for trials methodology, with a particular interest in risk-based monitoring.

A trial manager with 4 years’ experience in clinical trials. Sarah joined the Nottingham Clinical Trials Unit in 2019, after a previous research career in immunology. Whilst at the NCTU Sarah has worked on rheumatology, neonatal, and cancer trials, with most experience in the set-up and recruitment phases. Sarah is a keen advocate for open communications and engagement with sites and is the API champion for the NCTU.

Joe Newman is a British Heart Foundation Clinical Research Fellow at the Heart and Lung Research Institute at the University of Cambridge. Joe is a respiratory registrar currently undertaking a PhD in novel and digital endpoints in cardiopulmonary clinical trials. His research is in app- and wearable-based remote measures and patient engagement in digital trials. As a keen educationalist, Joe also has a Masters in Medical Education and was the East of England Trainee Representative for Respiratory Medicine for a number of years.

He has worked on many clinical trials at Royal Papworth and Addenbrooke’s Hospitals in Cambridge, including RECOVERY, HEAL-COVID, multiple Covid-19 vaccine studies and PHOSP-COVID before moving into the field of pulmonary hypertension in which he is sub-PI for StratosPHere which is due to start recruiting in Autumn 2023. Joe led the national network of 42 NIHR APIs during the HEAL-COVID trial, recently submitting a manuscript regarding the APIs’ experience and their impact on patient recruitment into the trial.

Sharon Dorgan has worked for the Clinical Research Network since 2008 in a variety of roles including Lead Research & Management Manager and Research Operations Manager. Sharon joined the network after working as a Nurse Consultant and is a Senior Strategic Manager and Workforce Development Lead for CRN North East and North Cumbria. She is passionate about providing opportunities for NMAHPs to continually grow their research knowledge and skills and is currently on secondment with the NIHR Nursing & Midwifery team leading on the development and implementation of  the Principal Investigator Pipeline Programme (PIPP) for research nurses and midwives.

Professor Ruth Endacott was appointed inaugural Director of Nursing and Midwifery at the National Institute for Heath and Care Research (NIHR) in May 2021.

In this newly created post, Ruth has responsibility for providing professional leadership for nurses and midwives who are supporting, delivering or leading research, promoting nursing and midwifery within the NIHR and beyond, and encouraging more professionals to become involved in research. Ruth is Emeritus Professor at Monash University, Melbourne and Trustee/Director at the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC).

Krishnaraj Rathod has been recently appointed as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and an Honorary Interventional Cardiology Consultant at Barts Heart Centre in London. He was the Associated Principal Investigator for two studies (iCorMicA and CHIP-BCIS3). He played an essential role in setting up these two studies at Barts Heart Centre and continues to help with recruitment and presents at regular investigator meetings. In addition, following completion of this scheme, Krishnaraj has now started to take up roles as Principal Investigator in studies that he has started at Barts Heart Centre.

Professor Jon Wadsley was appointed as Consultant Clinical Oncologist at Weston Park Hospital, Sheffield in 2004. His clinical interests are in thyroid cancer, neuroendocrine tumours and pancreatic/biliary tract cancers, with a particular interest in molecular radiotherapy.

His research mirrors these clinical interests, with a particular focus on thyroid cancer and neuroendocrine tumours. He is a member of the NCRI thyroid cancer subgroup and currently chairs the CTRad working group on molecular radiotherapy. He is Clinical Director of the Sheffield Cancer Clinical Trials Centre, Cancer Specialty Lead for the Yorkshire and Humber Clinical Research Network and NIHR National Specialty Lead for Radiotherapy and Imaging.

I am a clinical nurse specialist, with 18 years of experience in stoma care in a variety of locations. Currently I am working as the Lead CNS of a busy stoma care department at the Royal Devon University Healthcare Foundation Trust in Exeter (RDUH). As with all stoma CNSs I am passionate about quality patient care both in the primary and secondary setting and am lucky enough to work with a team of seven CNSs who embody the philosophy of a structured continuous pathway for our patients.

With a keen interest in patient empowerment, the role of prevention and patient quality of life outcomes within stoma care, I embrace all research, with a particular interest in hernia prevention and management.

At present I am the Principal Investigator for the PROPHER study at RDUH.

Owen is a GP partner at the University of Nottingham Health Service. He completed the 6-month Associate PI Scheme in July 2023 while working on the HARMONIE RSV study, under the mentorship of local PI Dr Simon Royal (NIHR CRN National Specialty Lead for Primary Care). He was the first Associate PI to complete the NIHR scheme while working on a commercial study.

Owen graduated from the University of Oxford (St.Anne’s College) with a degree in Chemistry in 2004. He developed his interest in research as a medicinal chemist in drug discovery teams at GSK and Novartis between 2004-2012. Owen graduated from the University of Nottingham’s Graduate Entry Medicine course in 2016 and completed his GP training in Nottingham in 2021. He currently works closely with Dr Royal in leading a variety of research activities at the University of Nottingham Health Service.

Professor Thomas Pinkney is George Drexler and Royal College of Surgeons Chair of Surgical Trials at the University of Birmingham, and a Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at University Hospitals Birmingham

Professor Pinkney is Director of the Birmingham Surgical Trials Consortium (BiSTC) and the Birmingham Centre for Observational and Prospective Studies (BiCOPS).  He is Chair of the IBD sub-committee of Association of Coloproctology of Great Birtain and Ireland (ACPGBI) and Vice-Chair of the Research Committee of the European Society of Coloproctology (ESCP).

Tom's research interests are predominantly in clinical and translational research in inflammatory bowel disease and surgical site infection. As a founding member of the West Midlands Research Collaborative, he maintains an interest in development of trainee-led clinical trials in surgery. He sits on the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) CET Board and the NIHR RfPB West Midlands Panel.

Pharmacy Team for Division of Surgery and Critical Care 

I qualified as a pharmacist in 2014 and have been working in hospital pharmacy ever since. For the past 6.5yrs I have specialised in Critical Care completing the prescribing course and an MSc in Critical Care. I currently work at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust as the Pharmacy Team Lead for the Division of Surgery and Critical Care. I have been involved in research as a pharmacist in a few trials including BLINGIII and decided I wanted more involvement in trials and wanted to act as a co-PI. I was encouraged to participate in the NIHR Associate PI Scheme which I did as part of the SIGNET study. I now hope to participate in further trials and eventual lead as a PI.

Leadership Capability Manager | 

CRN National Coordinating Centre (CRNCC) | 

 NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) 

Ruth Wallbank is Leadership Capability Manager at the NIHR Clinical Research Network Coordinating Centre.

She has been part of the CC for over ten years and during this time has grown an appreciation for research and the people that make it happen. Her work involves identifying and implementing learning and development for individuals, teams and groups.

One of her legacies is her involvement in the Advanced Leadership Programme, which aimed to develop effective network leaders within the research workforce. She has more recently qualified as an ILM 5 certified coach.