Biomedical engineer and researcher, Hilo by Aktiia

Dr. Tiago Almeida is a biomedical engineer and researcher working at Hilo by Aktiia, where he focuses on turning cardiovascular and clinical evidence into health technology products.

He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a background in cardiovascular science. At Hilo by Aktiia, he contributes to clinical reports and studies related to blood pressure monitoring, such as the Hilo BP Report UK. His work bridges the gap between academic research, medical device development, and practical health applications.

Professor of Cardiovascular Clinical Pharmacology at the School of Cardiovascular Medicine & Sciences, King’s College London and Vice President of the BIHS

Phil Chowienczyk worked in biomedical engineering before studying medicine at Guy’s Hospital Medical School. His research relates to the in vivo assessment of cardiovascular structure and function in humans with the aim of elucidating mechanisms leading to arterial disease and interventions to prevent/treat arterial disease. Phil currently leads a programme on stratified mechanisms in hypertension. He retains an interest in biomedical engineering in relation to non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular function.

Phil is the Vice President of the British and Irish Hypertension Society takes over as President on 14 September 2026.

Professor, Head of School, Cardiovascular & Metabolic Health, University of Glasgow and Honorary Consultant Physician with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde

Professor Christian Delles research focusses on prevention of cardiovascular diseases and spans from fundamental mechanistic research to clinical translation. Much of his research is driven by an interest in hypertension and includes the molecular basis of vascular diseases; the pathogenesis and long-term consequences of hypertension including hypertensive disorders of pregnancy and gestational diabetes; links between cardiovascular and renal diseases; and differences in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular diseases between men and women.

Professor Delles serves as Secretary of the Council of the European Society of Hypertension, Chair of Scottish Heart & Arterial disease Risk Prevention (SHARP), Honorary Treasurer of the Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Ireland, and Treasurer of the European Council for Cardiovascular Research. He is a member of national and international grant panels and associate editor and editorial board member of leading cardiovascular journals. He has a keen interest in teaching and training and chairs the University's Clinical Academic Training Advisory Committee.

Clinical Lecturer in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology at King's College London and Honorary Consultant at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, BIHS Treasurer

Dr Luca Faconti completed his medical training in Pisa (ESH Excellence Centre) and started his involvement in the BIHS as the Young Investigator Representative (2019 to 2022). His research focuses on hypertension and hypertension mediated target organ damage including arterial stiffness and cardiac remodelling. He has extensive expertise in non-invasive assessment of cardiovascular structure and function using multi-modality imaging.

Senior Lecturer in Public Health Nutrition NIHR Advanced Fellow Head of Research and Impact, Action on Sugar Centre for Public Health & Policy, Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London

Dr Kawther Hashem is a lecturer in Public Health Nutrition and leads the Public Health Nutrition module of the MSc and iBSc in Global Public Health and Policy. she also heads the research and impact of our action on sugar workstream at the Research and Action on Salt and Obesity unit.

Kawther has a BSc in Nutrition from King’s College London, a MSc in Food Policy from City University London and a PhD in Preventive Medicine focusing on sugar reduction from Queen Mary University of London. Her PhD project and associated publications contributed to the impact case study for the REF2021.

Kawther's research background and interests focus on the impact of food and nutrition policies on food and drink product composition. Notable areas of interest include the effects of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy, the UK Government’s sugar and calorie reduction programmes, restrictions on promotions and advertising for high-fat, salt, and sugar foods and the use of nutrition claims and child-appealing packaging on products. She has experience in working across diverse sectors including the food industry, non-governmental organisations, and most recently academia.

Kawther currently hold a prestigious NIHR Advanced Fellowship looking at the policies that led to food reformulation to reduce sugar in the top contributors to sugar intake in children in the UK and as part of the fellowship, she will be a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Food Policy at City University of London.

She is also a visiting lecturer on nutrition and food policy at several UK universities and is regularly invited to comment on nutrition topics and food policy in the media.

Consultant Clinical Pharmacologist and Physician at St James Hospital and Clinical Senior Lecturer at Trinity College Dublin

Dr Cormac Kennedy's experience gives him a perspective of the journey of medicines from the bench to the bedside including the pharmaceutical, regulatory, economic, policy and clinical contexts. Cormac is a graduate of UCD Medical School and the School of Pharmacy Trinity College. He completed a PhD at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, the product of which was subsequently patented. He received a HSE-NDTP Management and Leadership Scholarship to undertake a Masters in Health Economics, Outcomes and Management at the London School of Economics and was awarded a Distinction. He is undertaking a Masters in Clinical Trials at Oxford University. He chaired the Trainee Committee of the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland. He was a member of the RCPI Council, its highest body, representing nearly 2,000 Irish medical trainees. His clinical interests include the specialist treatment of hypertension and lipid disorders and he has presented internationally and published in these areas. His other research interests are across a spectrum of areas related to medicines including pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics and appropriate drug usage.

Professor of Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Chonnam National University Medical School, Chonnam National University Hospital, South Korea

Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Chonnam National University Medical School and Chonnam National University Hospital, South Korea, with specialist expertise in cardiology and electrophysiology. He holds senior leadership roles within the hospital’s Biomedical Research Institute and K-Health Big Data & AI Project, with a particular interest in the application of big data and artificial intelligence in cardiovascular medicine.

A Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), he is actively involved in several leading Korean cardiovascular societies, including the Korean Heart Rhythm Society, Korean Society of Cardiology and Korean Society of Hypertension. His international experience includes visiting scholar positions at Emory University and Georgia Tech in the United States, as well as a clinical fellowship in electrophysiology at Utah Regional Medical Center.

Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Liverpool, United Kingdom; Distinguished Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark

Professor Lip, MD, is Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, at the University of Liverpool, UK – and was Director of the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital (2019-2026). He is also Distinguished Professor at Aalborg University, Denmark; and Adjunct Professor at Seoul National University and Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He also holds Visiting or Honorary Professorships in various other Universities in UK, Serbia (Belgrade), China (Beijing, Nanjing, Guangzhou), Thailand (Chiangmai, Mahidol) and Taiwan (Taipei).

Half of his time is spent as a clinical cardiologist, including outpatient clinics (leading atrial fibrillation and hypertension specialist services) and acute cardiology.

Professor Lip has had a major interest into the epidemiology of atrial fibrillation (AF), as well as the pathophysiology of thromboembolism in this arrhythmia. Furthermore, he has been researching stroke and bleeding risk factors, and improvements in clinical risk stratification. The CHA2DS2-VASc and HAS-BLED scores - for assessing stroke and bleeding risk, respectively – were first proposed and independently validated following his research, and are now incorporated into international guidelines.
The ABC (Atrial fibrillation Better Care) pathway proposed by him is the core recommendation in the 2020 European AF guidelines, and has been shown to reduce adverse outcomes in AF patients.

In 2014, Professor Lip was ranked by Expertscape as the world's leading expert in the understanding and treatment of AF [http://bit.ly/2apB1Dt], a position still maintained in 2026 (https://bit.ly/3eP3qR4).

Professor Lip was on the writing committee for various international guidelines, including chairing the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Antithrombotic Therapy Guidelines for Atrial Fibrillation, as well as various guidelines and/or position statements from the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), Asia-Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS) etc.

Professor Lip has acted as senior/section editor for major international textbooks and at senior editorial level for major international journals, including Thrombosis & Haemostasis (Editor-in-Chief, Clinical Studies); Europace (Associate Editor); and Circulation (Guest Editor).

His current group’s research interests are broad, ranging from epidemiology to pathophysiology, translational research, clinical risk assessment and trajectories of risk, patient management pathways, and applied health research. He is passionate about using ‘big data’ and epidemiological observations to generate hypotheses and to inform clinical studies that help improve the management of common cardiovascular conditions, such as atrial fibrillation, hypertension and thrombosis. This ‘big data’ work is often in collaboration with an extensive global network of friends and collaborators, including those in Denmark, France, the Balkans, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, sharing a common goal in ‘research without boundaries’ in relation to epidemiology and clinical studies.

Professor Emeritus of Immunology, Blizzard Institute, Queen Mary University of London

Tom MacDonald is Professor Emeritus of Immunology at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary, University of London. Professor MacDonald has a long-term interest in the intestinal immune system in health and disease, with particular interest in chronic inflammatory bowel disease, food hypersensitivity, the relationship between the normal flora and gut immunity, and protective immunity to bacterial pathogens. 

Tom MacDonald received a PhD in immunology from Glasgow in 1976 and then did a post-doc at the Trudeau Institute in upstate New York. In 1978 he was appointed as an assistant professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1983. In 1984 he left Philadelphia and worked at Merck and Co for a year, before returning to Bart's Medical College in 1985. In 1986 he was appointed a Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer at Bart's (till 1994), was promoted to reader in 1989, and given a personal chair at the University of London in 1991. In 2000 he moved to Southampton medical school to head up the Division of Infection, Inflammation and Repair and then in 2005 he returned to Barts and the London, as Professor of Immunology and Dean for Research in the Medical and Dental School. He has over 400 publications, mostly on how inappropriate immune reactions cause disease in the human gut. His H-factor is 79 with almost 22,000 citations. He was awarded FRCPath in 1995 and FMedSci in 2002 and elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002. In 2008 he received the Presidents Medal from the British Society of Gastroenterology. Achievements include identifying that T cells cause coeliac disease and Crohn's disease; the role of TNF-alpha in IBD; with Nestle developing ModulenIBD to treat pediatric Crohn's disease; and identifying the critical role of Smad7 in chronic inflammation in Crohn's disease (antagonising Smad 7 in Crohn's disease is now in phase III). He was a former associate editor of Gut and Gastroenterology and currently is an associate editor of Mucosal Immunology and the IBD journal. He has served on many grant awarding panels and advisory groups and is currently a member of the review panel of NC3R's, Action Medical Research, was a past member of PSMB at MRC (2007-11) and chairs the MRC non-clinical training panel, sits on the MRC training and careers panel, chairs the Mason Medical Foundation Awards panel and also chairs the Kings Health Partners Awards Panel. He is a co-investigator on an MRC Programme with Graham Lord from Kings College and receives support from Glaxo Smith Kline in the UK and USA, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Grunenthal, VH2 and Topivert to develop new molecules to treat inflammatory bowel disease.

Space precludes listing the number of invitations to speak at international meetings he has had in the last 25 years.  But in the last year he has spoken at meetings in Italy (twice), Germany, France, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Norway, Chile, Argentina, USA and Australia.  In 2007 he was elected President of the Society of Mucosal Immunology, a largely US based organization for 2009-2011. 

Appointed Director of the Division of Infection Inflammation and Repair at the University of Southampton School of Medicine  in 2000, he  re-organised the division and  organized and co-ordinated a £10 million Wellcome Trust JIF rebuild of the main research facilities in the medical school. He also led the division into the RAE 2001 where they scored a 5 in clinical medicine.

Returning to QMUL as Dean for Research in the FMD in 2005,  He co-ordinated, the medical and dental school RAE 2008 return, where Barts and the London was 4th in the UK and top in London in terms of research quality.

“Towards a Vigorous Old Age - Diet and Lifestyle Challenges seminar in Dublin seminar”,
Professor MacDonald told the seminar that there was some scientific evidence that probiotics or “friendly bacteria” helped to boost the immune system in the elderly and could also help to protect against common infectious diseases, such as the winter cold.
Prof MacDonald was involved in a recent study with Danone which found that probiotics boosted immune system response in the elderly and also gave some protection against common infectious diseases.

Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology Cardiff School of Sport & Health Sciences

Professor Barry McDonnell is an active clinical research scientist in the area of cardiovascular physiology, which helps inform his teaching, design, development, delivery and evaluation of several taught programmes. These programmes include BSc Biomedical Science, BSc Healthcare Science, HNC Biomedical Science, HND Biomedical Science, BSc Biomedical Science (Health, Exercise and Nutrition), BSc Human Nutrition and Dietetics, BSc Public Health Nutrition, BSc Complementary Healthcare and BSc Podiatry.

He currently leads the Vascular Physiology Research Group focused on cardiovascular physiology, ageing and disease and is Principle Investigator for three clinical physiology research trials: (The ARCADE trial, investigating the impact of respiratory disease on arterial haemodynamics; the ACCT study, investigating the role of premature vascular ageing on blood pressure and cardiovascular risk in Collaboration with University of Cambridge; and the HIT-LVAD Trial in Columbia University, New York Presbyterian Hospital, investigating the impact of ventricular assist device implantation on vascular haemodynamics in patients with heart failure).

Barry is Co-Director of the Wales National Cardiovascular Research Network, the UK and Ireland Lead for May Measure Month, a member on the BIHS Technology Committee and Editor for ARTERY Research.

Senior Research Associate in the Division of Experimental Medicine and Immunotherapeutics Fellow and College Lecturer in Physiology

Dr Carmel McEniery is a Principal Research Associate in the Division of Experimental Medicine and Immunotherapeutics, University of Cambridge, and a College Lecturer in Physiology at Churchill College, Cambridge. Her key research interests are the mechanisms driving the development of hypertension in young adults, and how blood pressure and its underlying haemodynamic mechanisms differ between the sexes and change across the adult age-span. Dr McEniery is the current President of the ARTERY Society and has previously served on the BIHS Executive Committee both as an ordinary member and Secretary. She is currently a member of the BIHS Education Committee.

Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Vascular Risk and Surgery, School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, and member of the BIHS Executive Committee

Dr Ryan McNally's postdoctoral research project was a joint clinical study between King’s College London and the University of Cambridge investigating salt-sensitivity in the pathogenesis of hypertension. He is now conducting research into personalised medicine for hypertension at the King's Health Partners Centre for Translational Medicine and is working as a pharmacist at St. Thomas' Hospital. Ryan is also member of the European Society of Hypertension Young Investigator Committee.

Research Fellow - Hypertension Research Laboratory Victorian Heart Institute, Department of Pharmacology, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University

Dr Rikeish R Muralitharan is a Research Fellow at Monash University leading a program that uncovers how gut‑derived signals shape cardiovascular function. His discoveries established a receptor‑level mechanism linking microbial metabolites to blood pressure control (R Muralitharan et al., Circulation Research 2025), revealing new pathways driving hypertension. He now translates these findings into clinical studies and therapeutic development, including a next‑generation fibre supplement and the GRAINS‑BP trial. He collaborates widely across Australia and internationally, with a strong focus on mechanisms, clinical impact, and accessible innovation. His work has been recognised through national and international awards (finalist for 23 awards, winning 17), competitive funding (>$400,000), major media coverage, and growing industry and clinical partnerships.

NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in Cardiology Queen Mary University of London and St Bartholomew’s Hospital

Dr Hafiz Naderi studied medicine at Barts and The London School of Medicine with an intercalated degree in Molecular Therapeutics for which he received 1st class honours. After qualifying in 2012, he trained in general medicine, gaining membership of the Royal College of Physicians in 2015. He completed his general cardiology training in Northwest London hospitals and commenced sub-specialisation in cardiac imaging at Hammersmith hospital.

In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious British Heart Foundation Pat Merriman Clinical Research Training Fellowship to undertake a PhD at Queen Mary University of London entitled ‘Predicting hypertension mediated subclinical left ventricular hypertrophy using machine learning techniques.’ This work was awarded the Alfred Thomas Corrie Prize from the Voluntary Hospital of St Bartholomew’s. Dr Naderi was also recipient of the Young Investigator Award (2022) and Early Career Researcher Award (2024) from the British and Irish Hypertension Society.

Dr Naderi has several national committee roles in the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging, the British and Irish Hypertension Society and the European Society of Hypertension.

Dr Naderi is also passionate about patient and public engagement and launched a YouTube channel called 'The Heart Doctor' to raise public awareness of heart disease.

Associate Professor of Exercise and Cardiovascular Physiology, University of Leicester

Dr Jamie O'Driscoll's research focuses on innovative exercise training interventions and advanced cardiac imaging to improve the prevention and management of chronic diseases particularly cardiovascular disease, diabetes, renal disease, and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. He investigates these areas through human interventions, clinical trials, and meta-analyses, with the goal of translating findings into meaningful clinical impact. In 2024, he joined the Diabetes Research Centre as an Associate Professor in Lifestyle Medicine and continue to collaborate closely with several groups at St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (London), University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge.

Physiotherapist, specialising in Frailty, working in NHS Community Services and member of the BIHS Executive Committee

Prior to this role Sam Olden spent several years working in cardiac rehabilitation and preventative cardiac health management in London, which sparked his interest in Hypertension. He has carried through to his Frailty work, with particular interest in non-pharmacological interventions for blood pressure management in the older adult.

Pontecorvo Chair of Pharmacogenomics Professor of Cardiovascular Genomics and Therapeutics BHF Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Health, University of Glasgow

Professor Sandosh Padmanabhan completed his MBBS and MD at JIPMER, Pondicherry, India and was awarded the Gold Medal for MD General Medicine in 1995. His PhD (1999-2003) on G-protein signalling in hypertension was awarded the Bellahouston Medal by the University of Glasgow in 2004. He received the Austin Doyle Award from the International Society of Hypertension in 2004. His pharmacogenetic genomewide linkage study led to a BHF Intermediate Fellowship (2006-2009).

Professor Padmanabhan was the lead on a genome wide association analysis of Hypertension between 2008 and 2010 resulting in the discovery of a new gene and pathway for hypertension. He was a visiting fellow to the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT (2010-2012). He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the British and Irish Hypertension Society and the American Heart Association.

Professor Padmanabhan's research combines epidemiology and randomised clinical trials incorporating high-throughput genomics and metabolomics in the dissection of cardiovascular traits and drug response. As a principal investigator in the MRC Stratified Medicine consortium on Hypertension (AIM HY), he leads the work strand that aims to discover ancestry and metabolomic markers of antihypertensive drug response in large randomised clinical trials. He co-lead's the research on the functional dissection and translation of our GWAS discovered hypertension gene, uromodulin, and this involves salt interventional studies, a range of omics studies and a genotype directed clinical trial

Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine. School of Public Health - Faculty of Medicine

Professor Neil Poulter qualified at St Mary’s Hospital, London, in 1974, following which he trained in General Medicine. He then spent 5 years in Kenya co-ordinating a collaborative hypertension research programme at the Wellcome Trust Research Laboratories in Nairobi.

On his return to the UK in 1985 he gained an MSc in Epidemiology with distinction at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Following this he was Co-PI of the WHO Oral Contraceptive case-control Study at University College London Medical School.

In 1997 he was appointed Professor of Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College London, where he is currently co-Director of the International Centre for Circulatory Health and Founding Director of the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit. He is an Honorary Consultant Physician and Epidemiologist at the Peart-Rose (CVD Prevention) Clinic based at Hammersmith Hospital, London, where he is actively involved in the treatment of patients with hypertension and related problems.

He was President of the British Hypertension Society from 2003-2005 and President of the International Society of Hypertension (2016-2018). In 2008, he was elected as one of the Inaugural Senior Investigators of the NIHR and also elected as a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2009.

He has contributed chapters to several major textbooks and published over 700 papers in peer-reviewed medical journals, including co-authoring several sets of national and international guidelines. Professor Poulter was identified as being among the top 1% most cited academics in clinical medicine in 2014 (Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher report) and among the top 0.1% most cited researcher between 2008-2024 (Web of Science Group Highly Cited Researcher).

He has played a senior management role in several international trials including the ASCOT, ADVANCE, EXSCEL, DEVOTE, LEADER, CREOLE, TOPSPIN and SOUL trials; other research activities include the optimal investigation and management of essential hypertension and dyslipidaemia; the association between birth weight and various cardiovascular risk factors; the cardiovascular effects of exogenous oestrogen and progesterone; the prevention and aetiology of type 2 diabetes and abdominal aortic aneurism; and ethnic differences in cardiovascular disease. He is the Chief Investigator of the May Measurement Month, an annual global blood pressure screening campaign initiated by the International Society of Hypertension

Cardiovascular Physician and Hypertension Specialist at Barts Health NHS Trust and Queen Mary University London, Member of the BIHS Executive Committee

Dr Manish Saxena's research interest is in developing novel therapies to improve patient outcomes and prevention of cardiovascular/metabolic diseases. He is UK lead on academic and commercial studies with pharmaco-therapy and devices in dyslipidaemia, obesity, hypertension, heart failure, diabetes, inflammation and anti-coagulation. Manish works closely with Health Research Authority as an expert member and  National Research Ethics Committee Chair. He is Deputy Director for research at Barts Health NHS Trust and QMUL. He has been recognised as leading Principal investigator by NIHR

Head of the Department of Primary Care and Mental Health and Senior Clinical Lecturer at University of Liverpool

Dr Eduard Shantsila is Head of the Department of Primary Care and Mental Health and a Senior Clinical Lecturer. He also works as a GP at Brownlow Health GP Partnership and as a GP with Specialist Interest in Hypertension at the Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital. His background is as an academic cardiologist.

Eduard's primary clinical academic interests are:
- Holistic care of people with cardiovascular pathology, particularly in disadvantaged and hard to reach groups, those with frailty and mental health diseases
- Hypertension prevention, timely diagnosis and individualised management for best outcomes
- Data science and digital technologies in healthcare.

He joined the University of Liverpool in August 2021, moving from Birmingham after completing GP training in 2020 and working full-time as a GP during the COVID-19 pandemic. He participates in multidisciplinary research collaborations focusing on cardiovascular health (hypertension, atrial fibrillation, heart failure), especially in the context of medical complexity, multimorbidity, polypharmacy and frailty. In 2008, Eduard joined the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at City Hospital in Birmingham to undertake a Research fellowship funded by the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. This collaborative research between primary and secondary care led me to a PhD with the Department of Primary Care Clinical Sciences at the University of Birmingham and then continued working at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at the City Hospital in Birmingham, splitting his time between clinical cardiology duties and postdoctoral research. Eduard initiated clinical research on monocytes in cardiovascular pathology, leading an internationally recognised group. Seven UK cardiology and vascular surgery speciality trainees completed their MD/PhD degrees as members of the group working with several international research fellows. He was a co-PI of an NIHR-funding IMPRESS-AF trial of spironolactone in atrial fibrillation with preserved ejection fraction and developed skills in quantitative research as a member of the E-ECHOES Study (Ethnic - Echocardiographic Heart of England Screening Study) team.

Associate Professor in Applied Health Research at the University of Oxford, and Secretary of the BIHS Executive Committee

Dr James Sheppard's research focusses on better understanding the benefits and harms of commonly prescribed treatments, with a particular emphasis on medications used for cardiovascular disease prevention. His work involves systematic reviews, statistical modelling, epidemiology and primary care based clinical trials

Consultant Nephrologist and Associate Medical Director for Research and Education at Epsom & St. Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust (ESTH).

Dr Pauline looks after patients with all stages of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and has a specialist interest in high blood pressure/hypertension. She runs clinics in general nephrology, hypertension and a multidisciplinary cardio-renal-metabolic clinic. She is a Fellow of the British and Irish Hypertension Society (BIHS) and Chair of the patients charity Blood Pressure UK (BPUK).

She is the Associate Medical Director for Education, Research and Innovation at Epsom & St. Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust. Her own research interests include hypertension, kidney disease and cardiovascular risk and the delivery of clinical trials in hypertension, CKD and diabetic kidney disease.

She is a strong advocate for widening the scope of research into the community and it is her strong belief that equitable patient access to research and education underpins high quality health and care provision for all.

Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Dr Phil Gold Chair in Medicine, McGill University, Montreal

Dr Rhian Touyz, is the Executive Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). She is the Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine and Dr Phil Gold Chair in Medicine, McGill University, Montreal. She is also the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Emeritus Chair. She served 10 years as the Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences and BHF Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK. In 2021 she was recruited to Montreal to direct the RI-MUHC.  

Dr Touyz, a clinician-scientist focusing on molecular mechanisms of hypertension, received her MBBCh, MScMed, and PhD in South Africa and completed post-doctoral work in Montreal (Clinical Research Institute of Montreal).

She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences UK, Royal Society of Edinburgh, College of Physicians UK, Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and Royal Society of Canada. She has received numerous awards, including the Hypertension Research Excellence Award from the American Heart Association, the highest honour in the field.  

Dr Touyz is the editor-in-chief of Hypertension. She contributes to best clinical practice and co-chaired the 2024 European Society of Cardiology hypertension guideline and was a task force member of the 2025 Endocrine Society guideline on primary aldosteronism.

She held leadership roles in premier organizations, notably Chair, Hypertension Council of the American Heart Association, President, International Society of Hypertension and Chair, European Council of Cardiovascular Research. She is a strong advocate of equal opportunities for all in academia and research. She founded the ‘Women in Hypertension Research Program’ of the International Society of Hypertension and led the Silver award Athena Swan program at the Institute of cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow. She has spearheaded numerous mentoring schemes for early and mid-career researchers.

She has published 694 peer-reviewed papers [h-index:161; citations: 210984]. She has an interest in translational research where her discovery science impacts care of patients with hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Her particular areas of interest include:  1) vascular signaling and redox biology; 2) the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system; 3) adipose biology and cardiometabolic disease; 4) cardiovascular toxicity of anti-cancer drugs, 5) small vessel disease and vascular dementia, 6) pathophysiology and clinical management of human hypertension. She has supervised over 105 graduate and post-graduate trainees and is committed to mentoring young and mid-career researchers.

Her research has been recognized internationally at the highest level as indicated by the 2024 and 2025 Highly Cited Researchers – top 1% in the world. 2024 and 2025 Highly Cited Researchers™ list

Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Director of the EPICORE Centre in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Dr. Ross Tsuyuki was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. His training includes:

• BSc(Pharm) from the University of British Columbia
• Residency at St. Paul’s Hospital, Vancouver.
• Postgraduate Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from the State University of New York at Buffalo
• Postdoctoral fellowship in cardiovascular clinical trials in the Division of Cardiology at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario (Supervisor: Dr. Salim Yusuf)
• MSc in Health Research Methods from McMaster University

Dr. Tsuyuki is a Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Director of the EPICORE Centre in the Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Dr. Tsuyuki is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Pharmacists Journal and the Past President of Hypertension Canada.

His research interests are in health services research, particularly in the area of pharmacist care for acute and chronic conditions.

Senior Lecturer at the William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, and member of the BIHS Executive Committee

Dr Helen Warren works in the field of cardiovascular genetics. Her research focuses on the genetic discovery for blood pressure, risk prediction for hypertension, and pharmacogenetics for the response to both antihypertensive drugs and statins. She is the lead genetic analyst for ASCOT (Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial) and BRIGHT (British Genetics of Hypertension study). Helen is a senior leader of the International Consortium of Blood Pressure, the Genomic Investigation of Statin Therapy Consortium, and International Consortium for Antihypertensive Pharmacogenetics Studies. Helen has been a BIHS member since 2014, a Trustee & Executive Committee member since 2024, and a Collaborative Research Committee member since 2017

Clinical Pharmacologist, Professor of Therapeutics at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Professor Ian Wilkinson leads the regional secondary/tertiary care hypertension service, directs the Cambridge Clinical Trials Centre, and is a Non-Executive Director of Royal Papworth Hospital. Ian's research centres on the pathophysiology of hypertension and its treatment. He has a broad research portfolio including national trials and cohort studies with a wide range of funders including the NIHR, MRC and BHF.

GP and an expert in primary care cardiology and hypertension and President of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society

Raj trained at UCL and in the Oxford Deanery. His varied roles include GP partner since 2004, primary care cardiology lead for the Oxford Health Innovation Network and national primary care workstream co-lead for the cardiac transformation programme (NHSE). He is also on the national expert advisory groups for lipids, heart attack and heart failure. Raj is the President of the Primary Care Cardiovascular Society, Honorary Visiting Professor at Cardiff University Medical School and Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge. Previous roles included Clinical Commissioning Director for Bucks CCG/BOB ICB, Cardiac Lead for the TV Strategic Clinical Network, and atrial fibrillation champion for NHSIQ Thames Valley. Raj has worked as a presenter on BBC Radio and is a medical writer, speaker, and advisor. He has written and published over 200 articles and several books including the MIMS consultation guide (BMA book of the year, Medicine, 2012)