Christ’s College Medical Alumni Association Meeting
6 September 2014
SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Judith Allanson (m 1980) is Consultant in Neurorehabilitation and Clinical lead for
the Evelyn Community Head Injury Service and inpatient rehabilitation at
Addenbrooke’s. Judith has a particular interest in recovery mechanisms after brain
injury and is a member the Cambridge group for Research in Impaired
Consciousness. She has been involved in development of the Cambridge Head Injury
database (with the aim of creating a head injury registry) and establishment of a
Community Head Injury Service within a multiagency network. Other roles with
relevance to todays’ discussions include being a member of a Royal College of
Physicians Guidelines development group on management of people with Prolonged
Disorders of Consciousness; sitting on the National Rehabilitation Delivery Board;
and chairing the British Society for Rehabilitation medicine (BSRM) committee on
Core standards for Trauma rehabilitation.
Stephen Bown (m 1962) is partially retired as Professor of Laser Medicine & Surgery
at UCL, where he has directed the National Medical Laser Centre (a translational
research group developing optical diagnostic and therapeutic techniques,
particularly photodynamic therapy) since 1984. He has over 250 peer reviewed
articles on the medical applications of lasers. He is now focusing more on
environmental issues, particularly the threats to global sustainability posed by over
population and over consumption. He is a Trustee of “Population Matters” and leads
the Charity Education Committee raising awareness of the environmental challenges
we face amongst all age groups, especially in schools.
Tom Boyd (m. 1970) is a GP in Bushey, Hertfordshire. He has been involved in
postgraduate training of GPs and in the development and implementation of the
membership examination of the RCGP. He now acts as an expert witness for the
Medical Protection Society and claimants’ solicitors. He met his wife in the Third
Court of Christ’s in 1970 and they have three children and four grandchildren.
Fazal Hasan (m 1979) is a consultant surgeon at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells
NHS trust. Previously he has held the posts of medical director at Benenden Hospital
and Associate Professor of Surgery at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences.
Tim Heymann (m 1980) is Reader in Health Management at Imperial College
Business School and consultant gastroenterologist at Kingston Hospital. He is an
international examiner for the Royal College of Physicians. He recently demitted
office as Non-Executive Director of NHS Direct.
Mike Knapton (m 1983) is currently working as a salaried General Practitioner in
Cambridge, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation (from 2006)
and more recently joined the Board at Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation
NHS trust as a non-executive director (2013). He is also Treasurer of the Cambridge
Medical Society, Treasurer of the East Anglian Faculty of the Royal College of
General Practitioners and a Trustee of the Genetic Alliance UK.
Theresa Marteau (Fellow) is Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit in
the Clinical School at the University of Cambridge, and Director of Studies in
Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She studied
social psychology at the London School of Economics and abnormal psychology at
the University of Oxford. Her research interests include: the development and
evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally diet, physical activity,
tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health
inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non conscious processes; risk
perception and communication particular of biomarker-derived risks, and their weak
links with behaviour change; the role of evidence in policy. She is a Fellow of the
Academy of Medical Sciences and of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Mike Morgan (m 1969) is the National Clinical Director for Respiratory Services in
England. He is a consultant respiratory physician at the University Hospitals of
Leicester NHS Trust at Glenfield Hospital and Honorary Professor at the University
of Leicester. He is also a Vice President of the British Lung Foundation, the editor of
Chronic Respiratory Disease and previously, Chairman of the Asthma UK research
committee. He has recently demitted as Chairman of the British Thoracic Society.
Rashmi Patel (m 2002) completed his medical degree at the University of Oxford in
2008. He is currently a Medical Research Council (MRC) Clinical Research Training
Fellow in the Department of Psychosis Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's
College London. He has a particular interest in the neurobiology of psychotic
disorders and the role of text mining of electronic health records to develop more
effective treatment strategies.
Andrew Sharkey (m 1979) is Director of Studies in pre-clinical medicine at Robinson
College, Cambridge. Andrew is an associate lecturer in the department of Pathology
and his research interests include: embryo implantation, diagnosis and treatment of
infertility, development of novel approaches to contraception. A second major area
of work involves a collaboration with Professor Ashley Moffett. The goal is to
understand how uterine NK cells regulate trophoblast invasion and vascular
conversion, during early pregnancy. This process is compromised in certain
pregnancies leading to conditions such as pre-eclampsia. The aim is to translate these
findings into improved diagnosis of high-risk pregnancies
Jim Smith (m 1973) is Deputy Chief Executive and Chief of Strategy at the Medical
Research Council (MRC) as well as Director of the MRC’s National Institute for
Medical Research (NIMR), a post he took up in 2009. He is also a member of the
Board of Trustees of the Francis Crick Institute where until recently he was Director
of Research and a member of the Executive Team. He was previously Professor of
Developmental Biology and Director of the Gurdon Institute at the University of
Cambridge.
Jim studies mesoderm formation in vertebrate embryos and in human and mouse
embryonic stem cells. His work will help drive stem cell differentiation along the
appropriate developmental pathways. He has published about 200 peer-reviewed
papers. Jim is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Academy of Medical Sciences
and has won numerous awards including the European Molecular Biology
Organisation (EMBO) medal in 1994 and the Waddington Medal of the British
Society for Developmental Biology (BSDB) in 2013.
Tom Turmezei (m. 1996) is a Wellcome Trust Clinical PhD Fellow working in the
Cambridge University Engineering Department where his research is on developing
automated analysis of the hip joint from medical imaging data. He is also an
honorary consultant radiologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, a Council
member of the British Association of Clinical Anatomists and founder and lead of the
online Bookclub for the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management. In the past
Tom has co-authored the Oxford Handbooks of Clinical Medicine and Clinical
Specialties, and recently joined the author team for the next edition of Weir and
Abrahams Imaging Atlas of Human Anatomy. He also supervises in undergraduate
Human Anatomy at Robinson College, Cambridge.
Ed Wild (m 1996) is a Clinical Lecturer in Neurology at UCL Institute of Neurology
and Honorary Specialist Registrar in neurology at the National Hospital for
Neurology and Neurosurgery, London. His research focuses on identifying
biomarkers and experimental therapeutics for Huntington's disease, a fatal
neurodegenerative condition. He is the co-founder of HDBuzz, a plain-language
research news platform for HD families. He chairs the European Huntington's
Disease Network (EHDN) Biomarker Working Group and is a member of EHDN's
Scientific and Bioethics Advisory Committee. He also sits on the Advisory Boards of
the Huntington's Disease Association and the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on
Huntington's Disease. He won the Huntington Society of Canada 2012 Community
Leadership Award and HD Association of America's 2014 Research Award.
Eugene Wong (m 2009) is a final year medical student at Christ’s College. His
undergraduate Part II was in Pathology during which he completed a project in
Immunology. He was awarded a William Harvey Studentship last year. He recently
returned from a two month elective in Canada for which he received a Desmond
Hawkins Award. He plans to pursue Emergency Medicine as his career.