Advisory Board

David is Director of Research Programmes, Infrastructure and Industry Engagement. His teams manage a portfolio of NIHR Research Programmes, NIHR Infrastructure schemes (including Units and Schools) and facilitate collaboration across the NIHR Infrastructure including Biomedical Research Centres and Applied Research Collaborations. David is involved in the design and implementation of a monitoring and evaluation process alongside the NIHR Open Access policy. David has 25+ years’ experience in life science and healthcare technology transfer and innovation management.

Cat is Editor in Chief of the NIHR Journals Library and Director of Health Services Research UK, a self-supporting membership organisation which convenes creators and users of health services and social care research. Cat has been involved in editorial work for over 10 years, most recently as Head of Education for The BMJ. Before that, she set up the Research Integrity team across BMJ’s portfolio of journals, was quality improvement editor for The BMJ, leading the creation of a series of articles on the science of improvement in collaboration with the Health Foundation, and was interim Editor-in-Chief for the journal BMJ Open Quality. Cat trained as a doctor in Brighton and London, was a Darzi clinical leadership fellow, and practised as a GP before moving to full-time editorial work.

Adam Goodger works in the Science, Research and Evidence Directorate at the Department of Health and Social Care which has responsibility for research policy and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Adam works across a number of research policy areas - including public partnerships, research dissemination and impact. He was previously Open Access policy lead for NIHR and has worked in policy roles across Government.

Rebecca Harmston is a patient representative who has been involved in health research since 2012. Rebecca is living with long-term health conditions and is the carer for a child with special educational needs. This means that she is able to represent the viewpoints of diverse patient groups. She has experience working with many UK research organizations including the NHS, the National Institute for Health & Care Excellence (NICE), the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), and hospitals and health-related charities to make sure that scientific research is relevant to patients and carers. Rebecca focuses on writing patient-facing documents, ethics, technology appraisal, reviewing grant applications to scientific funding bodies, and co-applicant roles on clinical trials. She originally trained as a research scientist and was a Scientific Officer at Cancer Research UK in Cambridge and a Research Technician at Cambridge University.

Dr Herrington has been a public advisor on a number of national committees including the NIHR Covid-19 Urgent Public Health committee, Covid-19 Understanding and Elimination-Trials Implementation Panel (CUE-TIP), Research Recovery Resilience and Growth (RRG), among others. She is an academic by background and has been a lecturer at a number of universities in the US, UK, and Ireland and has published in a broad variety of disciplines.

Sally Hopewell is Associate Professor at the Oxford Clinical Trials Research Unit and Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford. Her key areas of research expertise are in the design, conduct and transparent reporting of randomised trials and has been instrumental in leading the development of key reporting guidelines including CONSORT and PRISMA Statements.

She was awarded a D.Phil at the University of Oxford (2005) on research into the effects of unpublished data, and has a particular research interests in trial registration, data sharing, development of core outcome sets, pilot trials and trials of complex interventions.

Sally is a member of the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Clinical Evaluation and Trials Board and member of the advisory board for Current Controlled Trials.

Marian Knight is Professor of Maternal and Child Population Health at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, and an Honorary Consultant in Public Health with the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.

She is Director of the NIHR Research for Patient Benefit programme and was awarded one of the first NIHR Research Professorships in 2012.

Her research focuses on using national observational studies to address clinical questions concerning rare and severe complications of pregnancy and early life, and she has been instrumental in recent research understanding the risks posed to pregnant women and babies by COVID-19. She also leads the MBRRACE-UK national confidential enquiries into maternal morbidity and mortality, the findings from which have directly influenced actions to reduce disparities in pregnancy outcomes for women and babies.

Professor Christian Mallen is the National Director of the NIHR School for Primary Care Research.

He is the Head of the School of Medicine at Keele University, and an NIHR Research Professor in General Practice. Professor Mallen is also a Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health and a Founding Fellow of the Faculty of Clinical Informatics, in addition to leading Keele’s Global Health Research and serving as the Director of the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Programme for Primary Care.

His research interests focus on improving the management of common rheumatological complaints in primary care. In particular, he is interested in improving the diagnosis and prognosis of musculoskeletal disorders in a general practice setting, both in the UK and in low and middle-income country settings.

In addition to his research, Professor Mallen also works as a practicing GP in a North Staffordshire surgery.

Temidayo is a junior clinical fellow in neurosurgery at the Sheffield University Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He commenced this role after completing the academic (research) foundation programme at the Yorkshire and Humber foundation school. In 2020, Temidayo graduated in Medicine with distinction from the University of Plymouth, where he was awarded the best graduating student prize. He has achieved 21 academic prizes/awards at local, national and international levels. He gained formal training in research methods through an MSc in neuroscience at the University of Oxford (2019), and a PGCert in Health Research and Statistics at the University of York (2022).

From August 2020 to 2022, he was the director of academia at Melanin Medics, a UK national charity, where he created a national research network and led a national multicentre study to improve diversity in research engagement amongst UK medical students and clinicians. He is very passionate about enabling researchers to publish their research in full. Hence, from April 2019 to October 2020, he was a senior editor of the INSPIRE student health sciences research journal where he was involved in the production of two journal issues. Temidayo has particular research interests in clinical neuroscience, medical education and health inequalities.

Dani is a Director responsible for a number of the NIHR research programmes. Dani also has responsibility for the NIHR Journals Library and co-leads NIHR’s Open Research work programme.

Before joining the NIHR, Dani worked for the National Osteoporosis Society where she was involved in managing the charity’s research grants and policy programmes. Prior to that she completed a science degree and PhD before leaving the University of Bristol to work in the private sector.

Cara Sass is a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Health Sciences at the University of Leeds, working on an NIHR-funded programme grant to introduce a new therapeutic approach to the NHS for people who self-harm (FReSH START). She has worked in mental health and social care research since 2011, having moved away from a career in mathematics and finance. In this time she has worked with people experiencing a variety of marginalising conditions including dementia, alcohol dependency and self-harm. Cara is committed to increasing the representation of people from diverse ethnic communities in mental health research, which is a major focus of her current role within FReSH START as the lead for lived-experience involvement. She is particularly interested in the use of novel research methods to improve the accessibility and transferability of academic research, having utilised the narrative technique of Creative Non-fiction during her PhD to explore the experiences of men living with dementia through sporting reminiscence.

Sam is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds supported by an NIHR Advanced Fellowship and a Yorkshire Cancer Research Academic Fellowship. He is broadly interested in cancer prevention and control, with a particular focus on breast cancer. Topics he has been involved in include medication adherence, cancer in high-risk populations, weight management, clinical trial methodology, and cancer screening participation. Sam is a behavioural scientist and uses both quantitative and qualitative methods within his research.

Benjamin Saunders is a Lecturer in Applied Health Research in the School of Medicine at Keele University. Ben is Deputy Director of the Keele Centre for Musculoskeletal Health Research.

He is a social scientist from a medical sociology background, who is involved in a number of NIHR programmes developing and testing interventions to improve care and self-management for people with long-term health conditions. He has a particular interest in the areas of musculoskeletal pain, inflammatory bowel disease/ stoma care, mental health, and advancements in the use of qualitative research methods.

Claire is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire and joined the ARC East of England in January 2020. Her role involves building links with the ARC EoE populations in focus and developing and providing research support and initiative for programmes of research and implementation relating to prevention and early detection in health and social care. Her research interests focus on place-based inequalities, particularly in relation to food, health and wellbeing.

Before joining the University of Hertfordshire, Claire was based at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine working on a variety of projects including Olympic regeneration, alcohol licensing, and a Wellcome Trust Society and Ethics fellowship investigating the health and wellbeing challenges of foodbanking. She completed a PhD in Human Geography at Queen Mary University of London.

Peter Thompson is Director of Programmes and Impact at the NIHR Academy.

Peter has overall responsibility for NIHR’s research training programmes, through 3 programme teams: Personal Awards, Integrated Pathways, and Infrastructure and Capacity Building Structure. He is also responsible for NIHR Academy’s information and impact functions through the evaluation and impact team.

Previously, Peter worked as a research chemist in the pharmaceutical industry and as a post-doctoral researcher in Academia.