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Speakers


Dr Elizabeth Adeyeye, Barts Health NHS Trust, UK
Dr Elizabeth Adeyeye is a specialist registrar in Clinical Pharmacology and General Internal Medicine at Barts Health NHS Trust. She has been an investigator on several clinical trials, particular in cardiovascular medicine and hypertension and has a specialist interested in pharmacology and prescribing in the elderly population.
Dr Ali Albasri, Barts Health NHS Trust, UK

Dr Ali Albasri is a clinical pharmacist specialising in hypertension and cardiovascular disease. He completed his DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford where he later worked as a cardiovascular research fellow. His research has focused on the role of pharmacists in the management of hypertension, and later, on the risk/benefit profile of antihypertensive treatments. He has held clinical roles in primary and secondary care focusing on patients with hypertension and polypharmacy. He was awarded the BIHS Nurses/Allied Health Professional Award at the 2017 ASM, and a young investigator award from the BIHS in 2019. He is currently working as a cardiovascular medical adviser in industry alongside his clinical work at the Barts BP Centre of Excellence, and is a member of the BIHS Allied Health Professional working party.
Professor Tarek Antonios, St George's Hospital Medical School, UK
Dr Tarek Francis Antonios is a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Physician in Cardiovascular and General Medicine at St George’s, University of London.
Dr Antonios is a Clinical Hypertension Specialist, the Director and Clinical lead of the Blood Pressure Unit at St George’s University Hospital NHS Trust, which is recognized by the European Society of Hypertension as a Hypertension Center of Excellence.
Dr Antonios’ main research areas include the role of microcirculatory abnormalities in the pathogenesis of essential hypertension, preeclampsia, angina pectoris and heart failure. He is also interested into the microcirculatory mechanisms by which low birth weight and prematurity increase risk of later life cardiovascular disease. The British Heart Foundation has funded his research since 1997.
Mr Sotiris Antoniou, Barts' Health NHS Trust, UK
Sotiris is Head of Pharmacy at a large teaching tertiary referral centre and Consultant Pharmacist at Barts Heart Centre, part of Barts Health NHS Trust. Combined with his role as Lead Cardiovascular Pharmacist for UCL Partners supports medicines optimisation across the health economy to optimise patient outcomes and address unmet local needs.

He is an independent prescriber and manages a cohort of patients at the Bart’s Blood Pressure clinic, which has been recognised as a Hypertension Centre of Excellence by the European Society of Hypertension. Sotiris is also on the medical advisor board for the AF association and a board member of the European Society of Cardiology - Association of Cardiovascular Nursing and Allied Professions (ESC-ACNAP)

He has published extensively in the medical press and has a particular interest in managing hypertensive patients with multiple drug intolerances. Sotiris has served on many NICE development groups including Unstable Angina/NSTEMI guideline, stable angina and STEMI guidelines and is a current NICE TA member of the highly specialist technology appraisal group. Sotiris is also an honorary senior research associate at UCL School of Pharmacy.
Dr Chris Arden, GPSI Cardiology, Southampton, UK
Chris Arden is a GP near Winchester, Hampshire. He also works in community cardiac clinics in Southampton and Winchester as a GPSI in cardiology, assessing patients with suspected heart failure, atrial fibrillation, palpitations, hypertension and valvular heart disease.

The community cardiac service provides echocardiography, ambulatory ECG, blood pressure and event recorder monitoring; receiving consultant mentorship support from secondary care and working in partnership with specialist heart failure and cardiac rehabilitation nursing colleagues. He does a weekly stress echo clinic at Southampton General Hospital and has BSE accreditation in echocardiography.

Chris Arden is Editor in Chief of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Journal, a member of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, British Society of Echocardiography, British Society of Heart Failure and British Heart Valve Society. He is on the editorial board of the British Journal of Cardiology.
Professor Phil Chowienczyck, King's College London, UK
Phil Chowienczyk is Professor of Cardiovascular Clinical Pharmacology in the British Heart Foundation Centre (BHF) at King’s College London School of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Physician at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Foundation Trust Hospital. His research interests relate to hypertension and heart failure with a focus on precision medicine.
Professor Hugo Critchley, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK
Professor Hugo Critchley is Head of the Department of Neuroscience at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. His research focuses on understanding interactions between mind, brain and body, focusing on central autonomic control and interoception to understand the mechanisms linking normal and abnormal emotions to states of physiological arousal. This highly cited work combines neuroimaging, autonomic physiology, experimental psychology and patient studies. Clinically, Hugo is a neuropsychiatrists.
Professor Kennedy Cruickshank, King's College London, UK
Kennedy Cruickshank, now Emeritus, was Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Diabetes at King’s College & is consultant physician at St Thomas’ & Guy’s Hospitals, London since 2011, and previously in Manchester, UK. He was born & raised in Jamaica, West Indies. He did an intercalated Physiology BSc at medical school in Birmingham University, UK, epidemiological research training at the London School of Tropical Medicine, a Wellcome fellowship with Prof George Miller at the MRC Unit and Clinical Research Centre, Northwick Park, N-W London. His work on arterial function started there, later showing that arterial stiffness as pulse wave velocity was more powerful prognostically than, and independent of, blood pressure. He’d been a Lecturer in Medicine for a year after MRCP in Jamaica at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Mona with Prof. George Alleyne. With Prof T Forrester, he started a now 30y follow-up of survivors from severe acute malnutrition. From Northwick Park, he spent a further year as visiting Senior Lecturer and Consultant Physician at UWI/ QE hospital Barbados. With Prof Rory Collins’ help, he set up with a UWI team the Barbados Low-dose Aspirin Study in Pregnancy, In Manchester, he ran the Cardiovascular Clinical Trials Unit and coordinated an EU study on nutritional origins of high BP & diabetes between rural & urban Cameroon, Jamaica, France & Manchester. He ran the local arm in Manchester and helped set up Barbados for ‘HAPO’, the Hyperglycaemia and (Adverse) Pregnancy Outcome study, from whose local cohort of 2500 women many PhDs & papers arose. One on metabolomics showed that disturbances of intermediary lipid metabolites occur well before hyperglycaemia in T2 Diabetes, probably defining the disease and its blood vessel damage. He obtained Wellcome PhD fellowships for Nigerian and Kenyan fellows.
His research continues on the origin of ethnic differences in and appropriate treatment for cardiovascular disease, particularly arterial function and stiffness via mechanisms through the life course. He was President, 2016-2018, of the Artery Society.
Professor Kevin Davies, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK
Professor Davies is currently Medical Director of ACCEA and Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School and was previously a Consultant Physician and Rheumatologist at Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust. He was one of the first clinical academic appointments at the school, which is now one of the most successful ‘new’ medical schools in the UK. He was responsible for setting up the clinical teaching programme and is still very actively involved in running a new Masters course in Internal Medicine, one of the first in the UK, and in postgraduate teaching more generally in the South-East.
Professor Davies main foci of interest are multi-system rheumatic diseases, cardiovascular risk factors and inflammation, and chronic fatigue, areas in which area he is still research active. He also has extensive NHS management experience, having served for several years as Clinical Director of Medicine at both Hammersmith Hospital and Brighton, as well as playing a number of senior roles in the Kent Surrey Sussex LCRN, of which he is currently Deputy Clinical Lead.
Dr Luca Faconti, Young Investigator Network Representative, British and Irish Hypertension Society
Dr. Luca Faconti is Honorary Consultant in Cardiovascular Clinical Pharmacology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and Research Associate at King’s College London.
His research focuses on ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease and the pathophysiological role of cardiac pre-load on left ventricular remodelling and vascular function. Since 2017 he has been consultant (Hon) in the hypertension outpatient service at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust where he developed a special interest in the management of fibromuscular dysplasia and endocrine hypertension. In 2017, Luca was presented with the BIHS Young Investigators Award and was elected in 2019 Young Investigator Representative of the BIHS.
Dr Matthew Fay, Affinity Care
Dr Matthew Fay is a General Practitioner who joined Westcliffe Medical Practice in 1999. This has developed into the Affinity Care, a 25 partner superpractice based in Bradford providing care for over 64,000 population. Matthew is the Chief Clinical Executive but still does regular GP sessions at The Willows in Queensbury. In 2001 Matthew established a GPwSI cardiology service in Bradford which has expanded to provide direct access investigations and e-consultations. He was a member of the NICE AF Guideline Development Group. He is a Trustee of the AF Association and Thrombosis UK. He is first and foremost a family doctor, spending the majority of his time seeing people in the setting of a general practitioner
Professor Abigail Fraser, University of Bristol, UK
Abigail is a Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Bristol. Her work focuses on the relationship between women’s reproductive health across the life course and cardiovascular disease risk, with a particular emphasis on adverse pregnancy outcomes.
Dr Mark Glover, University of Nottingham, UK
MRC Clinician Scientist, Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant Physician

Mark trained in pre-clinical pharmacology and clinical medicine at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is a Clinical Pharmacologist and General Physician at the University of Nottingham and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. His clinical and research interests are in hypertension. Mark leads the hypertension service in Nottingham and an MRC funded research group focused on the molecular pathophysiology of sodium reabsorption in the distal nephron in Thiazide Induced Hyponatraemia and Gordon syndrome.
Mark is a member of the hypertension in adults guideline committee NICE NG136, the Prescribing Safety Assessment Board for UK medical students, NICE technology Appraisal committee B, and the Commission on Human Medicines Pharmaco-Vigillence Expert Advisory Group (PEAG).
Professor Robert Jones, University of Glasgow, Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre, UK
Rob is a medical oncologist from Glasgow where he is director of the CRUK Glasgow Clinical Trials Unit. His interests include cancers of the prostate, bladder and kidney.
Dr Vikas Kapil, Barts Health NHS Trust, UK
Vikas Kapil read Medicine and Anatomy at Queen’s College Cambridge, achieving first class undergraduate honours and then transferred for his undergraduate clinical training to University College London Medical School.
He completed postgraduate training at St Thomas’ and St Bartholomew’s hospitals and was awarded his PhD under the supervision of Professor Amrita Ahluwalia at the William Harvey Research Institute, investigating the effects of inorganic nitrate on the human cardiovascular system.
Since 2015, he has been a senior lecturer at WHRI and consultant in the Barts BP Centre of Excellence at Barts Heart Centre, with sub-speciality interests in blood pressure disorders (including circulatory dysautonomia) and aortopathy. His research encompasses nitric oxide signalling, autonomic dysfunction, and of course, COVID-19.
Professor Lesley Kavi, PoTsUK
Professor Lesley Kavi
Dr Kavi studied medicine at Glasgow University and worked as a GP in the West Midlands and Dundee for 32 years. Her special interests are syncope and postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS). She lectures at Birmingham City University and is trustee and chair of PoTS UK, a national charity that supports and advises patients and healthcare professionals.
Dr Ninian Lang, University of Glasgow, UK
Ninian Lang is an academic cardiologist based at the University of Glasgow. He serves as an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre. His clinical and academic work focuses on cardiovascular oncology and heart failure. He runs the West of Scotland cardio-oncology service and integrates this clinical practice with an active research programme. His clinical trial and translational research in cardio-oncology relates to vascular and myocardial injury induced by established and novel chemotherapeutic agents. His heart failure research includes clinical trials and clinical mechanistic studies of vascular and cardiac pharmacology.
Coming SoonDr Alexander Lyon, Royal Brompton Hospital, UK
Professor Tom MacDonald, Ninewells Hospital & Medical School, Dundee, UK
Tom MacDonald is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology & Pharmacoepidemiology at the University of Dundee and Honorary Consultant Physician at Ninewells Hospital & Medical School, Dundee, Scotland, UK. He is also the Director of MEMO Research and the Hypertension Research Centre (HRC) within the Medical School at the University.
Under his leadership, MEMO now carries out large multi-centre, multinational, clinical trials and currently has in the region of 32,000 randomised patients. Tom was the principal investigator of one of those streamlined safety studies, Febuxostat versus Allopurinol Safety Trial (FAST), which is now near completion. He is the PI for the Treatment In the Morning versus Evening (TIME) study which has >21,000 randomised patients.
He is active in a number of learned societies and is a past president of both the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) and the British & Irish Hypertension Society (BIHS).
Tom has published extensively in journals including The Lancet and The Journal of Hypertension on subjects such as hypertension, cardiovascular disorders and safety of medicines, especially the safety of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
Professor Una Martin, President, British and Irish Hypertension Society

Professor Una Martin is President of the British and Irish Hypertension Society. Una is Dean of Birmingham Medical School and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Birmingham. She is a Consultant at University Hospital Birmingham Foundation Trust where she leads the Hypertension Service.
Coming SoonProfessor Christoph Nienaber, The Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals NHS Trust
Ms Michaela Nuttall, Smart Health Solutions, UK
Michaela, is a cardiovascular nurse specialist with a unique and varied experience across the NHS and beyond. She developed her passion for prevention over 25 years ago. 2016 she left public health after 16 years and now has a range of roles, Director for Smart Health Solutions, Associate in Nursing for C3 Collaborating for Health. In 2020 she founded Learn With Nurses CIC.
Often seen as the voice of reason, she is Chair of HEART UK Health Care Committee, sits on the Guidelines& Information and Nurses working parties of the British and Irish Hypertension Society and elected to the education committee of the Association of Cardiovascular Nursing & Allied Professions.
Some of Michaela's proudest achievements are being the founding chair Prevention Group for the South East London Cardiac Network and the Cardiovascular Nurse Leaders Group (CVNL), writing for the WHO and being invited to present at the American Heart Association. Until March 2021, she was also the Clinical Advisor for CVD Prevention at Public Health England.
Being a Trustee at PoTS UK keeps her firmly rooted in the challenges patients face in living with life altering conditions
Often not lost for words, she was delighted and overwhelmed when she won the Nutrition and Health Nurse of the Year Award in 2013.
Mr Sam Olden, CP+R, UK
Sam Olden is a Chartered Physiotherapist and Exercise Scientist that specialises in preventative healthcare and cardiac rehabilitation. Sam works in an independent clinic on Harley Street leading a team of nurses and exercise specialists who deliver specialist exercise and lifestyle interventions. Sam has a particular interest in the use of exercise and lifestyle change alongside medication in management and prevention of hypertension. Sam's experience has involved work in both private healthcare and the NHS as well as both practical and research-based projects. I also take an active interest in developing and leading education programmes specialising in exercise and cardiovascular disease. Sam is the current chair of the Nurses and Allied Health Professionals Working Party for BIHS.


Dr Chloe Park, University College London, UK
Dr Chloe Park is a Researcher at the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at UCL. Her research includes investigating changes in cardiac and arterial structure and function in large birth cohorts. She is also currently Senior Scientific Communications Manager for the UK Government National Core Study investigating Covid-19 Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing.
Professor John Potter, University of East Anglia, UK
Professor John Potter is a clinical academic and leads Ageing and Stroke Medicine research at the University of East Anglia Medical School. His clinical work is based on the Hyper-Acute Stroke unit at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital where he also ran a Cardiovascular Syncope unit. Academic interests focus on the management of acute stroke with particular regard to blood pressure, cognitive changes post-stroke and the cardiovascular physiological changes of ageing, centring on cerebral blood flow control.
Dr James Sheppard, University of Oxford, UK

James is a lecturer at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care, University of Oxford. His research focuses on better understanding the benefits and harms of treatments used for cardiovascular disease prevention. This includes the largest trial conducted to date of antihypertensive deprescribing in patients aged 80 years and older.
Professor Ian Wilkinson, Cambridge University, UK
Ian Wilkinson is a Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital. He helps deliver the ESH-accredited regional hypertension service, and runs a joint obstetric/clinical pharmacology antenatal hypertension clinic. Over the last 25 years, his research has focused on understanding the mechanisms of hypertension, with a particular focus of aortic stiffening and systolic hypertension. He has authored over 260 peer reviewed papers and currently directs the Cambridge Clinical Trials Unit. Together with colleagues in Cambridge and London he is running the MRC/BHF AIMHY clinical trial that will define the best mono and dual antihypertensive therapy for different ethnic groups in the UK. 2022 will see the launch of a large Wellcome Trust funded study – POPPY – which will help us understand why women who develop hypertension in pregnancy have a much higher risk of developing fixed hypertension and a significant excess burden of cardiovascular disease.
Coming SoonProfessor Brian Williams, University College London, UK
Ms Helen Williams, Southwark CCG, UK
Helen is the National Speciality Adviser for CVD Prevention at NHSE&I and is working on delivery of the CVD ambitions for AF, Blood Pressure and Cholesterol in line with the Long-Term Plan. Helen has worked as a CVD specialist for more than 25 years in hospital, community, and primary care settings. She led on the development and implementation of consensus evidence-based CVD guidance for use across South London covering a population of 3.6million and supported local practitioners through education and training, guideline implementation, clinical audit, service development and provision of virtual or face to face clinics. She was clinical adviser to the national AF AHSN programme and developed the pharmacist-led virtual clinic model to optimise uptake of anticoagulation in AF, which is now being spread nationally through the NHSE AF demonstrator programme. She is currently also working at UCLP on the development and implementation of proactive care frameworks for long-term conditions to support primary care in the post COVID-19 environment.