Professor Janet Lord is director of the MRC-ARUK Centre for Musculoskeletal Ageing Research and the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing. Janet’s research focuses on the innate immune system, the body’s front line defense against infection, and how the efficiency of this system is affected by ageing and stress, the latter including physical trauma and emotional stress such as bereavement. She is also interested in how the ageing of the immune system predisposes adults to chronic inflammatory diseases such as Rheumatoid Arthritis and COPD and the muscle wasting associated with age and these conditions. In all of her work she aims to translate research findings into interventions, whether lifestyle (exercise, diet) or pharmacological, to improve immunity and health in old age.
University of Birmingham Research Stars: Janet Lord (on YouTube).

Dr David Lissauer is a clinical lecturer in maternal and fetal medicine in the Institute of Metabolism and Systems Research at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the challenge of maternal and fetal infections during miscarriage, pregnancy and childbirth and how the maternal immune system adapts to pregnancy. Since spending time working as an obstetrician in Malawi he has maintained a strong passion for global maternal health and currently runs the AIMS trial, which is investigating the prevention of infection after miscarriage surgery in Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Pakistan and is also leading the development of a maternal sepsis bundle, as part of the WHO maternal sepsis initiative, to improve the management of maternal sepsis in low income countries.

Dr Semira Manaseki-Holland is a Clinical Senior Lecturer in Quality Improvement and Health Service Research in the School of Health and Population Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is a medical doctor, paediatrician and public health specialist with personal experience of living and working in low- and middle-income countries (Mongolia, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) where she was responsible for the delivery of complex regional health systems involving primary and secondary care and large community and health systems studies. Semira graduated from University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne medical school with a BMedSci, and an MBBS. She worked as a NHS Public Health/Child Health Consultant in Birmingham Health Authority and a Technical Officer at the WHO HQ, Geneva, before starting her Wellcome Trust Research Fellowship at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine towards her PhD. She currently conducts active research in Nigeria, the Gambia, Tanzania, Uganda, India, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Romania and other LMIC countries on childhood vitamin D deficiency, weaning food hygiene interventions, perineal trauma prevention and management and clinical handover in chronic diseases.

Professor Alastair Leyland is Professor of Population Health Statistics and Associate Director of the MRC/CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow. He is a fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, a Chartered Statistician and a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He has been an editor of the European Journal of Public Health since December 2009, serves on the Governing Board of the European Public Health Association (EUPHA) and chaired the European Public Health Conference when it was held in Glasgow in 2014. Alastair heads the MRC-funded research programme Measuring and Analysing Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health where his recent research has focussed on inequalities in mortality in Scotland and the evaluation of natural experiments. Other research interests include the application of multilevel modelling to health data, particularly concerning its use as a tool for exploring inequalities, and expanding the uses of routinely collected and linked hospital discharge, mortality and register data.

Dr. Klaus Püschel is a Full Professor and Director of the School of Medicine at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He completed his medical residency program in Family Medicine and a fellowship in cancer prevention at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, USA. Before becoming Director of the School of Medicine, Dr. Püschel was the chair of the Department of Family Medicine at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile for six years. He holds a Master Degree in Public Health and Community Medicine from the University of Washington and a Master Degree in Bioethics from the University of Leuven. His research areas are community medicine and medical professionalism. 

Dr Mikki Meadows-Oliver, PhD, RN is an Associate Clinical Professor and the Coordinator for Global Nursing Education Programs at the University of Connecticut’s School of Nursing in the United States. She is the past president of the nursing organization, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. Mikki Meadows-Oliver has practiced nursing for the past 23 years. Her clinical work has centered around working with children and families in impoverished areas of the United States. Her main fields of practice are lead poisoning, asthma and adolescent motherhood. 

Professor Anna Phillips completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2005, and then undertook post-doctoral research for one year. She then went on to win a prestigious 5-year Research Councils UK Fellowship. On completion of the fellowship in 2011 she was promoted to Senior Research Fellow, in 2012 to Reader in Behavioural Medicine, and to Professor in 2016. She received the Herbert Weiner Early Career Award 2010 from the American Psychosomatic Society in recognition of importance and sophistication of research for this career stage. Professor Phillips also won the Neal Miller Early Career Award from the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research 2010 - a very prestigious award to research. In 2011 Dr Phillips became the inaugural winner of the award for outstanding contributions to research from the British Psychological Society Division of Health Psychology. In 2014 she received the Stress and Anxiety Research Society’s Early Career Award for her research on stress and anxiety.
Anna's presentation is available here.

Dr Abd Tahrani is a NIHR Clinician Scientist at the University of Birmingham and Honorary Consultant Endocrinologist, Lead for Weight Management Research and Diabetic Neuropathy services at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital. He obtained his PhD from the University of Birmingham. His research interests include obesity pharmacology and management, the metabolic and vascular consequences of sleep disorders, the pathogenesis and treatment of diabetes-related microvascular complications, the pharmacology of type 2 diabetes. He has published more than 80 papers and book chapters and has received several national and international awards. He serves on the editorial board of several journals and is a peer reviewer to the main funding agencies in the UK and internationally. He has served as an expert adviser to NICE.

Dr Alex Conner is a Senior Lecturer of Medical Sciences at the University of Birmingham and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology. He teaches “the easy bits of the medicine course before we need clinicians” and has a small research group studying the structure and function of proteins in health and disease, especially heart disease and neurotrauma. Alex increasingly works in science communication facilitating discussions, talking about science to people without a traditional science background and showing off on stage.