Meet the Team

Professor David Jayne – Co-Director

David Jayne is Clinical Co-Director for the HealthTech Research Centre in Accelerated Surgical Care. He is Professor of Surgery at the University of Leeds and Honorary Consultant Surgeon at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. He brings expertise in the identification of unmet needs related to colorectal disease, the development of surgical technologies through interdisciplinary working, and clinical translation through early and late phase clinical trials.

In 2012, he was awarded an NIHR Research Professorship to develop and evaluated new surgical technologies for patients with bowel cancer. He served as Clinical Director for the NIHR HealthTech Co-operative in Colorectal Therapies (2012-17) and Clinical Director for the current MedTech Co-operative (MIC) in Surgical Technologies (2017-23).  He is the Surgical Technologies Theme Lead for the Leeds Biomedical Research Centre and a member of the NIHR Surgical Oncology Translational Research Centre.

David has a long track record of developing junior academic colleagues. He is Deputy ATPD for Surgery in the Yorkshire and Humber Deanery (2014-). He has served on the following training awards committees: national NIHR IAT Awards (2012-2018); NIHR DRF (2012-15); NIHR Clinician Scientist (2015-18), NIHR i4i PDA (2019-). He currently serves on the NIHR Advanced Fellowship committee (2018-). He was Co-Director of the NIHR Advanced Surgical Technologies Incubator (2020-23) with the remit to build national surgical research capacity and capability for medical and other healthcare professional researchers. He is mentor for AMS and NIHR Academy.

Ms. Vee Mapunde – Co-Director

Vee is the Senior Operations Director bring complementary expertise and leadership skills to the Senior Clinical Director role, with a proven track record of working cohesively to build interdisciplinary partnerships and training networks to accelerate the translation of innovation into the NHS.

Vee has held NHS professional and management roles, gaining extensive experience of cross-sector working to accelerate the translation and uptake of innovation into the NHS. She was Programme Director for the NIHR Surgical MedTech Co-operative (Surgical MIC) between 2018 – 2023.

Vee has over 15 years experience in leadership roles, developing and implementing strategy as part of research programme grants for the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) in England. This has included leading change management initiatives, supporting clinical research teams to develop long term strategies to improve on their business development capabilities; as well as improving business processes by making them more efficient and effective, to deliver on goals and objectives.

Ms. Sheila Boyes – HRC Programme Manager – Operational

Sheila worked for Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust since 1989,  in the MRI department before moving into research in 2000. She holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Health Research and a NEBS Management Certificate. She worked on clinical research studies with contrast agents and MRI in radiology for eight years, before taking on a research management role in 2008. Sheila joined the HTC in 2016 on secondment and went onto work on the Surgical MIC network as a Project Manager.  Sheila’s current role  is the HRCs Programme Manager – Operational.

HRC Programme Manager – Strategic

Profile Coming Soon

Dr Andy Lewington – Theme Lead for Early Diagnosis and Personalised Care

Dr. Andrew J. P. Lewington is a Consultant Renal Physician and Honorary Associate Professor at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, where he is the clinical lead for AKI and a kidney transplant physician. He was an expert advisor to the NCEPOD Adding Insult to Injury AKI study and is the AKI lead for the Renal Association. He is the current Renal Association clinical guidelines chair and sits on the RA clinical affairs board.

Dr. Lewington chaired a multi-professional group to produce the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges AKI core competencies. He is the UK Kidney Research Consortium lead for AKI and is working to facilitate AKI research in the UK. He was co-supervisor of the first Nephrology MRC awarded a grant in West Yorkshire investigating markers of kidney transplant dysfunction. He is the West Yorkshire LCRN renal study lead and the Chief investigator on an NIHR Applied Programme to evaluate protein biomarkers in renal transplantation.

He is chair of the NHS England AKI Risk Workstream. He was a member of the NICE AKI and intravenous clinical guideline groups. Dr. Lewington is the co-chief investigator for the NIHR portfolio study investigating the role of recombinant alkaline phosphatase in the treatment of AKI in sepsis (£29m). He is a chief investigator for the NIHR portfolio study assessing the outcomes of patients with acute kidney injury in critical care.

Dr Kerrie Davies – Co-Theme Lead for Early Diagnosis and Personalised Care

Profile coming soon

Dr Jane Freeman – Early Diagnosis and Personalised Care

Jane is an Associate Professor in Clinical Microbiology at the University of Leeds and a Clinical Scientist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust. She was National Clinical Lead for AMR Diagnostics at NHS England from 2022-24.

Her research interests are in Healthcare associated infections, antimicrobial resistance and infection diagnostics. She is a strong advocate for the patient voice in research and healthcare, and of women and healthcare scientists in clinical academic careers. She is Co-Chair of the Empower Leeds Women Network.

Dr Sunil Daga – Early Diagnosis and Personalised Care & Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead

MBBS MRCP (Nephrology) PhD @sunildaga23

Sunil is a Consultant Nephrologist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Leeds. He is the EDI lead for the NIHR HRC (Leeds) and his research interests are improving access to transplantation and improving kidney health. He has experience of working with industry on home digital technology, digital education and application of AI/ML in post transplantation outcomes.

He is an executive member of UK Organ Donation and Transplantation Research Network  and is a Subject matter expert in clinical transplant immunology. He is a Health Equity Fellow at West Yorkshire Health Inequality Network and has experience of working with several VCSE organisations across the UK in reducing health inequity. He is a strong advocate of co-production in research and wants the unheard voice to be listened in research.

Ms Naomi Ajenifuja – Early Diagnosis and Personalised Care

Naomi is an experienced management professional with a background in Biomaterials and Health Informatics. She has worked as a Programme Analyst and Project Manager for the NHS and is now the Programme Manager for the Early diagnosis and Personalised care theme (HRC). Her greatest desire is to contribute to the creation of cultures that are genuinely more inclusive. Everyone deserves a strong sense of belonging and she has been a dedicated advocate for this throughout her management career. Her technical skills aside – this is most important to her.

Mr Ryan Mathew – Theme Lead for Minimally Invasive Therapies and Digital Technologies

Ryan Mathew is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds and an Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at Leeds Teaching Hospitals. His clinical practice covers the full spectrum of general neurosurgery with a subspecialty interest in brain tumours; in particular gliomas, meningiomas and awake surgery.

After completing his PhD in Glioma Stem Cells and Organoids, and spending time at the Brain Tumour Research Centre at Sickkids in Toronto, he began co-leading the Stem Cells and Brain Tumour Lab Group where his focus is on translational approaches to technologies that deliver local therapeutic treatments.

As Neurosurgery Lead for the NIHR Surgical MedTech Cooperative, NIHR Surgical Technologies Academy Incubator and Royal College of Surgeons of England Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research, he also leads a research portfolio in surgical technologies and devices which encompasses virtual/mixed reality, machine learning/AI, real-time intra-operative tumour visualisation and histology, and local therapeutic delivery. He is Health Lead for Leeds XR, the Basic/Translational Science Lead for the Academic Committee of the Society of British Neurological Surgeons, member of the British Neuro-Oncology Society Research Subcommittee, a HoloMedicine Association Founding Member and Core Committee member of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission Novel Therapeutics Accelerator.

He has published numerous papers, is an internationally invited speaker and teaching faculty, peer-reviews for a number of journals and grant award committees, and has obtained > £8M in grant funding (PI or Co-I).

Professor Tze Wah – Co-Theme Lead for Minimally Invasive Therapies and Digital Technologies

Professor Wah has been appointed at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT) as Consultant in Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology since 2003 with sub-speciality interest in Interventional Oncology. She is passionate about practising evidence-based medicine and committed to the highest standards of research methodology. Since 2004, she has established, developed and leads an internationally recognised, clinical and research programme in Interventional Oncology (IO).

IO is an underrepresented clinical discipline and Professor Wah was inspired by the stories of patients that she had treated, in 2015, she led the formation of Interventional Oncology United Kingdom (IOUK) within British Society of Interventional Radiology (BSIR) to address this gap and was the founding chair for IOUK(BSIR) from 2015-2018. Subsequently, she led a cross-sectional study highlighting the lack of equity for patients to access IO services in the UK (BMJ open,2017-doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016631).

In Aug 2022, University of Leeds recognised her steadfast commitment in IO clinical academia and she was appointed the first Professor of Interventional Radiology at University of Leeds, a historic achievement as the ‘UK-First’ female Professor of IO.

Professor Faisal Mushtaq – Minimally Invasive Therapies and Digital Technologies

Faisal Mushtaq is Professor of Cognitive Science and Director of the Centre for Immersive Technologies at the University of Leeds. Mushtaq’s research sits at the interface between Psychology, Engineering, and Computer Science. He is founder of the Immersive Cognition Lab which specialises in the study of learning and skill acquisition using virtual environments. He co-leads the Immersive Healthcare Collaborative, a network of scientists, clinicians and industry leaders committed to supporting the implementation of safe and effective virtual and augmented reality technologies in healthcare training and delivery.

Mr Will Bolton – Minimally Invasive Therapies and Digital Technologies

Profile Coming Soon

Project Manager – Minimally Invasive Therapies and Digital Technologies

Profile Coming Soon

Professor Hemant Pandit – Theme Lead for Assisted Healing and Rehabilitation

Professor Hemant Pandit is a clinical academic based at the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS trust. He is Director of the Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Medicine, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and joint-director of the Centre for Health Tech Innovation.  Hemant is also the Deputy Director of Leeds BRC and co-leads a work theme in the Leeds HRC. He will be providing a brief overview of the Centre for Health Tech Innovation including planned activities and ways in which the centre will play an integral role in facilitating all the Health Tech Research (both basic and translational) in Leeds.

Professor Carl Thompson – Co-Theme Lead for Assisted Healing and Rehabilitation

Carl Thompson – Professor, Applied Health Research; Dame Kathleen Raven Chair in Clinical Research

Professor Thompson joined Leeds in 2015 from the University of York. His research portfolio reflects his interests in how professionals use technology and information in their judgements and choices and how to get health technologies working more effectively quickly. He established the first Anglo-Dutch MSc in Evidence Based Practice and led the Translating Research into Practice in Leeds and Bradford (TRiPLaB) theme in the first NIHR ARC for Yorkshire and Humber.

During the pandemic he led the NIHR’s Covid-19 Recovery and Learning (HTA-funded) CONTACT study of digital contact tracing in care homes, worked with the PROTECTCovid-19 core research study in care homes and the national CONDOR study of point of care testing in community settings. Professor Thompson is an experienced NHS Trust Non-Executive Director and mentors NEDs faced with innovating in care environments safely.

He provides scientific advice to Australian, Canadian, US and Dutch research funders. He has been part of research teams on more than £20m, published 3 books on Decision Making and Judgement and evaluation in healthcare professions; and has more than 130 peer reviewed articles on decision and implementation science, knowledge translation, evidence-based practice, research methods and, most recently, care homes and epidemiology. He is an academic partner in NICHE-Leeds (https://niche.leeds.ac.uk/) and helped secure Leeds recent entry into the NIHR School for Social Care Research.

Dr Anna Anderson Project Manager – Assisted Healing and Rehabilitation

Anna is a physiotherapist who has worked clinically in a range of settings and joined the University of Leeds in 2018. Her expertise spans digital interventions, musculoskeletal conditions, inclusion of under-served groups in research, and complex intervention development. Anna completed her PhD in 2022 funded through a Health Education England / NIHR Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship. Her PhD involved using an evidence-, theory- and person-based approach to develop a new digital intervention, the ‘Virtual Knee School’, to provide pre-operative education and a prehabilitation exercise programme for patients awaiting total knee replacement. As part of the Assisted Healing and Rehabilitation theme, Anna and her colleagues are working with a company called getUBetter to implement and evaluate the Virtual Knee School.

Anna is particularly interested in approaches for making health and social care research more inclusive for people with lived experience of disability and is involved in a range of initiatives related to that. Anna is a core team member of the Leeds Unit for Complex Intervention Development (LUCID) and co-leads the LUCID seminar programme and communications.

Professor Deborah Stocken – Theme Lead for Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Professor Deborah Stocken PhD Cstat, NIHR Research Professor in Statistics, Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research, University of Leeds UK

Professor Deborah Stocken is a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Research Professor and Director of the Surgical Interventions, Diagnostics and Devices Division at the Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research UK, hosting the Leeds Royal College of Surgeons of England Surgical Trials Centre. She is a member of the NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre executive committee and theme lead for the NIHR Leeds Healthtech Research Centre. She is a member of various NIHR funding committees and Chairs independent trial oversight committees.

Professor Stocken has a broad spectrum of clinical trials knowledge and experience with a successful NIHR and charity funded portfolio ranging from early phase safety studies to international effectiveness trials. Her Research Professorship is Statistical Innovation and Guidance on Methods and Analysis in Surgical research (SIGMA-S), with statistical interests in adaptive trial design and multivariable prediction modelling. She is responsible for developing and delivering methodologically robust research, scalable for NHS adoption and fostering multi-disciplinary links for portfolio expansion.

Professor David Meads – Co-Theme Lead for Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Profile coming soon

Julie Croft – Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Profile coming soon

Dr Armando Vargas-Palacios – Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Profile coming soon

Neil Corrigan – Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Profile coming soon

Alison Smith – Timely Clinical and Economic Evaluation

Alison Smith is a Lecturer in Health Economics based at the Academic Unit of Health Economics (AUHE) in the University of Leeds. She has extensive expertise on the economic evaluation of medical tests and devices, specialising in in-vitro diagnostics and the use of early health technology assessments and model-based cost-effectiveness analyses. She has experience in working across a range of disease areas, and is also involved in the supervision of PhD students.

Dr Helen Hughes – Theme Lead for Surgical Care Observatory

Dr Helen Hughes is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist, and Associate Professor in Organisational Psychology. Helen is the Behaviour Lab Director at Leeds University Business School, where she leads a purpose built, interdisciplinary facility to enable and support the study of human behaviour.

The Behaviour Lab community explores behaviour through observation, experiments, and eye tracking, as well as through virtual and augmented reality. The Lab partners with business and organisations, as well as other academic disciplines such as Engineering and Medicine. Helen’s own research applies socio-technical theory to explore the social dynamics of workplace relationships, and the future of work. She is passionate about translating research into usable insights and strategies, so that it can contribute to the work of academic and practitioner communities.

Helen works with a wide range of organizational partners, and regularly contributes to policy and practice discussions in her areas of specialisation. Her research has been published in international journals and edited books, and has been featured by media outlets including the BBC, Forbes, the Financial Times, and the Guardian, as well as radio and podcasts.

Project Manager – Surgical Care Observatory

Profile coming soon

Professor Peter Culmer – Theme Lead for Sustainability & NHS Net Carbon Zero

Peter Culmer is Professor of Healthcare Engineering at the University of Leeds, leading the Healthcare Mechatronics Group. He brings research expertise in the development of medical devices with a focus on sustainability and global healthcare. He leads research into sustainable materials for Circular Medical Devices (EPSRC ReMed project, with Loughborough University) and leads the Sustainability theme of the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Accelerated Surgical Care. He sits on the UK IMechE Biomedical Engineering Division (BMeD) committee and Innovations in Global Surgery organisation, working as an advocate for sustainable, global healthcare engineering.

https://www.imeche.org/industry-sectors/biomedical-engineering

https://surgicalinnovations.org/wpp/

Mr Adam Peckham-Cooper – Co-Theme Lead for Sustainability & NHS Net Carbon Zero

Adam is delighted to be the co-lead along with my colleague Professor Pete Culmer for the sustainability cross cutting theme within the Leeds Healthtech Research Centre. It is an exciting time for innovation and technology within the sustainable healthcare delivery space and we have ambitious plans to engage with our industry partners and colleagues to deliver real progress in this area.

Adams’s clinical focus is as an Emergency General Surgeon with a focus on the delivery of unplanned surgical care admissions. He is passionate about improving healthcare for this traditionally underserved patient cohort and work hard to deliver new and dynamic pathways to put patients in the right place at the right time, first time. Additionally using ambulatory pathways and initiatives such as the virtual ward means patients can be managed in their own home environment.

Adam is focussed on the delivery of sustainable and green options in surgery working hard towards the future net zero targets. As such he led a Leeds based team to victory in a national competition ‘Green Surgery Challenge’ co-hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Health and Royal College of Surgeons (Eng). Looking at the delivery of net-zero laparoscopic surgery thereafter has allowed him to bring his knowledge to the delivery of surgical techniques across a spectrum of presentations. He works closely with NHSE and other partners in this area and has presented internationally on the subject.

Adam trained in Liverpool as a post-graduate having completed initially a BSc in Pharmacology. As part of his studies he spent a year working with the pharmaceutical firm, Pfizer. He subsequently pursued surgical training throughout the Yorkshire region. He completed a research MD focussed on using oncolytic viruses to treat metastatic cancers and has published widely in a number of areas including in high impact journals and authored a number of book chapters.

Additional areas of interest include surgical training and particularly changing cultures to flatten hierarchy and develop the next generation of surgeons  also has a keen interest in global surgery and has worked both locally and in Uganda to deliver a number of laparoscopic simulation courses.

He is delighted to be part of the HRC and excited to see the outcomes it delivers over the next 5 year

Project Manager – Sustainability & NHS Net Carbon Zero

Profile coming soon