Speakers

We are delighted that the following speakers have accepted our invitation to speak during the Annual Scientific Meeting.

This page will be updated with more information as it becomes available.

Tony Heagerty, Head of the School of Medical Sciences, George Pickering Lecturer, UK Tony Heagerty obtained his medical degree from UCL and his MD in Leicester. He won the International Society of Hypertension Outstanding Young Investigator Award and delivered the Royal College of Physicians’ Goulstonian Lecture. He was Medical Director of the Manchester Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility until 2011. He is a former President of the European Society of Hypertension and the International Society of Hypertension. He served as a Member of the British Heart Foundation until 2010. In 2009, he was elected Vice-President of the British Hypertension Society and is currently the serving President. Professor Heagerty was a Founding Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences and formerly a Member of the Academic Medicine Committee. He serves on the Nominations Committee of the Royal College of Physicians. He has editorial board commitments to Hypertension, Journal of Clinical Metabolism & Diabetes, Therapeutic Advances in Cardiovascular Disease, The Open Cardiovascular Medicine Journal, Experimental Physiology, Current Hypertension Reviews, Hypertension, Diabetes and Vascular Disease Research and Blood Pressure. Professor Heagerty is a grant reviewer for Health Boards in New Zealand, France, Holland and in the United Kingdom. In 2006, he was the Folkow Lecturer for the European Society of Hypertension and Lecturer of the Year in Belgium.
Sinéad McDonagh, NIHR SPCR Research Fellow, UK Sinead completed her BSc in Sport Sciences at Brunel University in 2011. She then moved to the University of Exeter to study for a MSc in Sport and Exercise Medicine. During her time as a Masters student, Sinead became very interested in the effects of dietary nitrate supplementation and lifestyle choices on cardiovascular health and exercise tolerance and went on to pursue a PhD in this area. In 2017, Sinead joined the University of Exeter Medical School Primary Care department as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow where her research focuses on the detection and management of postural hypotension, hypertension and atrial fibrillation in primary care and the implementation of a home-based cardiac rehabilitation programme (REACH-HF) in the NHS. Sinead has recently been awarded a 2-year NIHR School for Primary Care Research Postdoctoral Fellowship to support her research interests in detecting postural hypotension in primary care, as well as training and development.
Hafiz Naderi, Clinical Research Training Fellow, UK Hafiz is currently undertaking a PhD at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, supported by the British Heart Foundation. Hafiz is also an Honorary Cardiology Registrar in Imaging at Barts Heart Centre, St Bartholomew's Hospital. Before beginning this Clinical Research Training Fellowship, Hafiz was a Cardiac Imaging Fellow at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust focussing on echocardiography. Hafiz has also completed a Cardiac CT Fellowship at Guy's and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Currently, Hafiz is gaining experience in Cardiac MRI at Barts Heart Centre. Hafiz is also passionate about digital education and has created a YouTube channel called "The Heart Doctor" to raise public awareness on heart disease.
Jun Yang, Associate Professor, Australia Dr Jun Yang is a Research Scientist within the Cardiovascular Endocrinology Group at Hudson Institute, a Consultant Endocrinologist at Monash Health and a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Clinical Sciences at Monash University. Since graduating with a MBBS (Hons, rank number 1) from Monash University, she has been actively involved in basic and clinical research as well as clinical practice. She undertook PhD studies with Dr Morag Young, Dr Colin Clyne and Professor Peter Fuller at Prince Henry’s Institute of Medical Research, now Hudson Institute, from 2008-2013. Her PhD thesis, entitled ‘Mineralocorticoid receptors (MR): mechanisms of ligand- and tissue-specific activation’, identified and characterised novel coregulators of the MR using a novel phage display technique in addition to cell culture work and gene expression assays. This work identified four novel coregulators that interacted with the MR in a context-specific manner, and was published in the journal, Molecular Endocrinology. Since completing her PhD, Dr Yang has continued to work on coregulator discovery. In particular, as the Cardiovascular Endocrinology group has shown that MR in macrophages is a key determinant of the macrophage proinflammatory state, she is working to identify macrophage-specific MR coregulators with the ultimate aim of developing a tissue-selective MR modulator that can alter the macrophage proinflammatory state without affecting epithelial MR activity. This would offer protection from cardiac fibrosis and failure without causing hyperkalemia. In addition to laboratory-based research, Dr Yang established the Endocrine Hypertension Service at Monash Health and Hudson Institute with Prof Fuller. She developed the guidelines for the management of primary aldosteronism (PA), coordinated inter-disciplinary research between the Departments of Interventional Radiology, Pathology, Cardiology, Respiratory Medicine, and Endocrinology, and collaborated with research groups in Perth, China, Italy, the Netherlands and the USA.
Luca Faconti, Clinical Leturer, UK Luca is a Clinical Lecturer in in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Honorary Consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Luca's clinical research career began in 2008 when they joined the European Centre of Excellence for the diagnosis and treatment of arterial hypertension whilst studying Medicine at the University of Pisa. After completing their medical training, Luca's passion for research inspired them to join King’s College London in 2015, where they developed an interest in the influence of ethnicity on cardiovascular disease. Since 2016, Luca has been supported by King’s College London British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence and in 2021 Luca completed a PhD in Cardiovascular Medicine. Luca's research focuses on hypertension and hypertension mediated target organ damage including arterial stiffness and cardiac remodelling. Luca has extensive expertise in non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular structure and function using multi-modality imaging.
Ryan McNally, Research Associate, UK Ryan is a pharmacist and completed his PhD in May 2022 at the King’s British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence. He is currently working on a joint clinical project between King’s College London and the University of Cambridge investigating salt in the pathogenesis of hypertension
Bushra Farukh, PHD Student, UK Bushra is currently undertaking a PhD at King’s College London focusing on the influence of affective disorders on the regulation of blood pressure and vascular stiffness. She is also the study manager for the AIM-HY trial (Ancestry and biological Informative Markers for stratification of Hypertension) at St Thomas’ Hospital. Her current research projects comprise of pathophysiology of hypertension, autonomic dysfunction, and arterial stiffness. Bushra graduated as a neuroscientist in 2013 and completed her MSc in clinical neuroscience from King’s College London. She has expertise in performing vascular measurements, manual delineation of brain structures, conducting randomised controlled trials, and has collaborated with multidisciplinary teams such as TwinsUK and Polar Electronics.
Pauline Swift, Epsom and St. Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, UK
Philip Lewis, Consultant Cardiologist & Clinical Hypertension Specialist, UK Dr Philip Lewis is a Consultant Cardiologist currently based at the private BMI The Alexandra Hospital and his current NHS post is Stockport NHS Foundation Trust. His areas of specialism are cardiology, general (internal) medicine and respiratory medicine. His areas of interest include hypertension, Resistant Hypertension, endocrine Hypertension including Conn's syndrome, hypotension (low blood pressure) and syncope, preventative cardiology, palpitations, and chronic fatigues syndromes. Dr Lewis qualified in Medicine at St Thomas' Hospital Medical School in 1971 with MB BS degrees. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1992 and a Fellow of Edinburgh in 2000. In 2003 he became a Certified Hypertension Specialist. He has many professional memberships including British Society for Heart Failure, Manchester Medical Society and British Medical Association. In addition, Dr Lewis is interested in research regarding hypertension, blood pressure measurement and presentation cardiology. He has also received many awards including Tite and Mellanby Scholarships, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, London, and he offers courses to GPs, topics include palpitations, chest pain investigation and treatment and cardiovascular problems in pregnancy.
Spoorthy Kulkarni, University of Cambridge, UK Spoorthy Kulkarni is a specialty registrar in Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (CPT), in Cambridge, UK. Her main clinical and academic interests include cardiovascular risk reduction with a focus on hypertension management, clinical trial designs and drug re-purposing, and translational medicine. She serves on various committees including the research ethics committee, the standing committee of the British and Irish hypertension society, the international editorial role of the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, the trainee representative at the National Specialist Advisory Committee for CPT, and trainee representative for CPT East of England. She is currently pursuing a clinical Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge.
Brian McKinstry, University of Edinburgh, UK Brian McKinstry is a former general practitioner and Emeritus Professor of Primary Care eHealth at the University of Edinburgh. He leads SHARE the Scottish Health Research Register (www.registerforshare.org) and until recently he led the Telescot programme of research into telehealth (www.telescot.org) His research interests are mainly around remote information exchange between clinicians and patients, more recently focussed on eHealth and telehealthcare. The Telescot programme has carried out multiple randomised controlled trials and descriptive/qualitative studies in this area. These studies include telemonitoring of chronic obstructive airways disease, heart failure, COVID, high blood pressure (HBP) and diabetes, remote measurement of cough and respiratory rate, the use of machine learning on patient accrued data to develop improved telemonitoring algorithms and video-consulting in general practice. He is clinical lead for Scale-Up BP, a large-scale implementation of telemonitoring of HBP, and with colleagues is exploring the use of routinely acquired data to evaluate this.
Richard McManus, University of Oxford, UK Richard McManus is a GP and Professor of Primary Care Research at the University of Oxford who leads a programme of research around the primary care management of hypertension including following hypertensive pregnancy. He is particularly interested how self-monitoring can be used to ensure patients receive the best care in a timely manner.
Chris Clark, University of Exeter Medical School, UK Chris studied Medicine and Physiology at University of Bristol Medical School, graduating in 1986. He joined the Mid Devon Medical Practice in 1994 as a partner, then Senior Partner, and continued working there until December 2020. He joined the Medical School as an Clinical Academic Fellow in 2004, completed his MSc in 2006 and his PhD in 2013. He was appointed as NIHR Clinical Lecturer in 2014, and Clinical Senior Lecturer in 2015.
Kazem Rahimi, Deep Medicine Group, NDWRH, University of Oxford, UK Kazem Rahimi is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Population Health, at the University of Oxford and a consultant cardiologist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. His research interests include hypertension, heart failure, multimorbidity and cardiovascular risk management, using a variety of methodologies such as individual-patient meta-analysis, large-scale decentralised clinical trials, and digital health technologies. Kazem leads the Deep Medicine programme at the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health with a major interest in application of machine learning approaches to electronic health records. He also leads the Blood Pressure Lowering Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration (BPLTTC), which is an international collaboration of all the major trials of blood pressure lowering drugs. He is the Director of the Martin School programme on Informal Cities and a Co-Investigator of the PEAK-Urban programme.
Adrian Brady, Glasgow Royal Infirmary, UK Professor Brady graduated in Medicine from Edinburgh University in 1985, summa cum laude. He trained in Cardiology at the Hammersmith Hospital, the London Chest Hospital and the National Heart and Lung Institute, London. During his research time Professor Brady won the British Cardiac Society Award and the American Heart Association Young Investigator Award. Professor Brady was appointed Consultant Cardiologist to Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1996. He is Honorary Professor of Cardiology at the University of Glasgow, and Visiting Professor of Cardiology at the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic, USA. Professor Brady is President-Elect of the Scottish Cardiac Society. Professor Brady’s major specialities are the clinical aspects and epidemiology of hypertension, coronary heart disease and pulmonary embolism. He was the principal investigator in four major UK studies (totalling 140,000 patients). He was the Principal Investigator for the UK in the IMPROVE-IT trial (TIMI 40) in acute coronary syndromes. Professor Brady has published over 100 papers in medical research journals on the above subjects and also in basic cardiovascular biology. His textbook, “New Perspectives on Hypertension,” is now in its third edition. A second textbook, “An Atlas of Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease,” is nearing completion. He is the Principal author of the Hypertension section of the current Mayo Clinic Textbook of Cardiology. Professor Brady has given over 200 invited national and international lectures including Plenary lectures at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), the European Atherosclerosis Society, the American Heart Association, the Japanese Circulation Society, the French Cardiac Society, the National Societies of South Korea, Chile, China, India, Taiwan, Portugal, Hong Kong, Thailand, Norway, Denmark, Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania and Egypt, the World Congress of Cardiology and the Mayo Clinic. Professor Brady represented the ESC on a lecture tour of China.
Anthony Wierzbicki, Guys And St Thomas Hospitals, UK Anthony Wierzbicki has been a consultant in metabolic medicine and chemical pathology at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust since 1995. He runs the lipid clinic in the Guy's and St Thomas' endocrinology service. He is an honorary professor in lipids and cardiometabolic disease at King's College London. He has also been a lecturer and honorary senior registrar in chemical pathology at Imperial College London. Before this he was a registrar in medical biochemistry at University Hospital of Wales and a medical research council fellow at the University of Oxford. He has also been chairman of the medical committee for HEART-UK. He has been a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE): technology and diagnostic appraisal committees familial hypercholesterolaemia guideline group He was also chair of the NICE lipid modification guideline.
Derek Connolly, Birmingham City Hospital, UK Dr Derek Connolly is a Consultant Cardiologist and the Director of Research and Development at Birmingham City Hospital and Sandwell Hospital. He was on the original design and naming team of the forthcoming super hospital, the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital which will open 2024. He trained in Edinburgh, Cambridge, London and San Diego where he was a Carnegie Scholar. He has a first class degree in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh where he was the Brunton medallist and Keasbey Bursary holder. His BHF funded PhD in molecular cardiology is from the University of Cambridge. He has been the Chief or Primary Investigator of multiple large trials in Cardiovascular medicine. He developed one of the UKs first primary angioplasty programmes, and one of the UKs largest cardiac CT programmes. His primary research interest is in the detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease.
Dr Derek Connolly is a Consultant Cardiologist and the Director of Research and Development at Birmingham City Hospital and Sandwell Hospital. He was on the original design and naming team of the forthcoming super hospital, the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital which will open 2024.
Manish Saxena, Barts Health NHS Trust, UK Dr Saxena completed MBBS in 1996 and has been practising medicine for over 25 years. He completed a Master’s degree in Health Care Research and Clinical Drug Development with distinction from Queen Mary University of London. He is Deputy Director for Research for Barts Health NHS Trust/QMUL and Clinical Co-Director at the William Harvey Clinical Research Centre. He works at Barts Hypertension Clinic as a European Accredited specialist in hypertension. Dr Saxena has worked with the Health Research Authority as an expert member for over 12 years and has been chair of the National Research ethics committee for over 7 years. He is part of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) leadership group as Speciality Research Lead for Diabetes for North Thames CRN. He is Academic Lead for Innovation and Commercial Partnerships for Barts Faculty of Medicine.
He trained in Edinburgh, Cambridge, London and San Diego where he was a Carnegie Scholar. He has a first class degree in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh where he was the Brunton medallist and Keasbey Bursary holder. His BHF funded PhD in molecular cardiology is from the University of Cambridge. He has been the Chief or Primary Investigator of multiple large trials in Cardiovascular medicine. He developed one of the UKs first primary angioplasty programmes, and one of the UKs largest cardiac CT programmes. His primary research interest is in the detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease.
Indranil Dasgupta, University Hospital Bristol, UK Indranil Dasgupta is a consultant nephrologist at Heartlands Hospital Birmingham and professor of nephrology and hypertension at the University of Warwick. Indranil does research in nephrology and hypertension.
Tina Chrysochou, Salford Royal Hospital, Northern Care Alliance, UK Dr Tina Chrysochou is a consultant nephrologist at Salford Royal Hospital and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester. She is the immediate past President of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Nephrology Section Council. She completed her PhD in 2011 entitled : ‘Prediction of Renal Functional Outcome after Revascularization with Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Atheromatous Renovascular Disease (ARVD)’, and has ongoing clinical and research interests in Fibromuscular Dysplasia (FMD) and ARVD. She is the UK lead for the Renal Rare Diseases register (RADAR) specialist interest group on FMD. Dr Chrysochou set up the Health Services Journal award-winning renal Young Adults Clinic at Salford Royal Hospital, and is the sub-group lead on Transition for the Renal Services Transformation Programme. The Young Adult Clinic was also used as a model of innovative, patient-centred care in the EGA Leadership Masters programme. Dr Chrysochou is the Northern Care Alliance Lead for Freedom to Speak up Team who were finalists in the 2020 Health Services Journal FTSU Organisation of the year.