Global AF Reach

Professor Paulo A. Lotufo 

Professor of General Internal Medicine at the Universidade de São Paulo Medical School (FMUSP) and Co-Director of the Center for Clinical and Epidemiologic Research. Professor Lotufo is Co- Principal Investigator of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil). Professor Lotufo is in charge of the Primary Care Program for undergraduate students and the General Internal Medicine rotation for undergraduate and medical residents. His research interests include cardiovascular and diabetes epidemiology.

Associate Professor Isabela M. Bensenor 

Associate Professor of General Internal Medicine at the Universidade de São Paulo Medical School (FMUSP) and Co-Director of Center for Clinical and Epidemiologic Research. Dr Bensenor is Co- Principal Investigator of the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Adult Health (ELSA-Brasil). She was responsible for the implementation of teaching of primary care in the health units of the Health District of Butantã for undergraduate students and the General Internal Medicine rotation of undergraduate students and medical residents.

Professor Rodrigo Olmos

Professor of General Internal Medicine, University São Paulo, Brazil. Professor Olmos works at the University Hospital of the University of São Paulo which is a secondary care hospital that has a strong interface with the primary health centres of the surrounding community. He teaches graduates as well as internal medicine and general practice residents mainly at the hospital outpatient clinic which serves as a general internal medicine reference to the General Practices in the western region of the city of Sao Paulo. 

Professor. Li Xuewen

Vice-president and Director of Cardiology , Shanxi DaYi Hospital, China. Professor Xuewen has medical experience on AF ablation, Pacemaker, and ICD implantation.

Professor Feng Mei

Director of General Practice and Vice President of Shanxi Provincial GP Training and Research Center, Shanxi DaYi Hospital, Shanxi, China. Professor Mei majors in chronic disease management. She is also involved in the training programme for general practitioners in Shanxi, China.

Professor Yutao Guo

Professor of Cardiology at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China. She is also a chief Physician, Division of Cardiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital. Her medical expertise is in arrhythmia, antithrombotic management, and cardiovascular disease  prevention.

Professor Rajendra Surenthirakumaran (Suren)

Senior Lecturer, Consultant in Family Medicine and Dean of the Department of Community and Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Prof Surenthirakumaren is a public health researcher and epidemiologist with a special interest in cost effective care for people with chronic diseases, especially in aging population and palliative care.

Dr Ajini Arasalingam

Senior Lecturer in Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Jaffna and Honorary Consultant Neurologist - Teaching Hospital Jaffna.  Dr Arasalingham's main research interest is in stroke & pharmacokinetics of neurological drugs.

Dr Kumaran Subaschandren

Lecturer in Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, Family Physician at University Family Health Centre Divisional Hospital Kondavil, Sri Lanka and a Research Fellow (2017-2018), Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham, UK. Dr Subaschandran's particular interests are in identification and management of patients with chronic disease in primary care and health service research.

Professor Gregory Y.H. Lip

Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, at the University of Liverpool, UK – and Director of the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Liverpool and Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital.  He is an Honorary Professor in the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham.  Professor Lip is a NIHR Senior Investigator, as well as Distinguished Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark, and Adjunct Professor, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

Half of his time is spent as a clinical cardiologist and he practises the full range of cardiovascular medicine, including outpatient clinics (leading large atrial fibrillation and hypertension specialist services) and acute cardiology.

Professor Lip's major interest is 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.  

He was selected to the Thomson Reuters Science Watch list of ‘World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014’, a ranking of today’s top 17 scholars who have published the greatest number of hot papers, ranked in the top 0.1% by citations, [issued June 2014; see website.  In 2014, Professor Lip was ranked by Expertscape as one of the world's leading experts in the understanding and treatment of AF 

Professor Lip was on the writing committee for various international guidelines, including 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) or EHRA. Specifically, he was also on the writing committees of the 2010 ESC Guidelines on Atrial Fibrillation, the 2012 ESC Focused Update Guidelines on Atrial Fibrillation, the 2012 ESC Guidelines on Heart Failure, and the 2014 NICE guidelines on AF.  He was Deputy Editor (“content expert”) for the 9th ACCP guidelines on antithrombotic therapy for AF (2012), and Chair of the new 2018 ACCP Guidelines on antithrombotic therapy for AF. 

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).

Professor Neil Thomas

Professor of Epidemiology and Research Methods, and Director, Research and Knowledge Transfer at the Institute of Applied Health, University of Birmingham. Professor Thomas is also the Regional Director of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Research Design Service for the West Midlands.  He has a multimillion pound global research portfolio focussing particularly on populations in Asia (e.g. Hong Kong, China, Iran) and Africa (e.g. Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda) investigating the aetiology (particularly air pollution), prognosis, prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic disease, including Atrial Fibrillation. 

Professor Peter Brocklehurst

 Professor of Women's Health and Director of Research and Development at the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, University of Birmingham and Professor of Perinatal Epidemiology and Co-Director of the Policy Research Unit in Maternal Health and Care, at the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit,  University of Oxford. Professor Brocklehurst's expertise is in RCTs and observational epidemiology. 

Professor KK Cheng

Professor of Public Health and Primary Care and Director of the Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham. Professor Cheng is also Director of the General Practice Development and Research Center, Peking University Health Science Center.  He has been a Professor at the University of Birmingham since 1995. His main interests are in the epidemiology, prevention and control of important non-communicable diseases and the development of primary care in China

Professor Sheila Greenfield

Professor of Medical Sociology at the University of Birmingham is a medical sociologist and qualitative methodologist. She is experienced in the design and implementation of qualitative research as a component of mixed methods research and the application of sociological theory. Previous and ongoing work has included the management and delivery of qualitative work across cross-cultural environments e.g. clinical handover (India); Prevention programme for Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (Pakistan); Yoga programme for type-2 diabetes prevention (India). Her major research interest is in the methods people use to self manage their health either for health promotion and prevention or for the management of diagnosed medical conditions.

Professor Kate Jolly

Professor of Public Health & Primary Care at the University of Birmingham. Professor Jolly's particular research interests are self-management and rehabilitation in patients with long-term conditions, including heart disease and the cultural adaptation of interventions.  She has experience of global research as co-investigator on the Birmingham COPD NIHR Global Health Group.

Dr Sue Jowett

Reader in Health Economics at the University of Birmingham. Dr Jowett's main research interests are applied economic evaluations, including evaluation alongside randomised controlled trials and the use of decision modelling, related to chronic disease prevention and treatment in a primary care setting. Her clinical areas of interest are cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and respiratory conditions and she has published health economic analyses of AF screening and treatment and anticoagulation management.

Professor Paulus Kirchhof

Paulus Kirchhof is Director of the Department of Cardiology at the University Heart and Vascular Center UKE Hamburg and is Honorary Professor at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Birmingham. Professor Kirchof researches translational mechanisms and management of cardiovascular diseases with a special interest in atrial fibrillation and cardiomyopathies from mechanisms to clinical research. 

Dr Deirdre Lane

Reader in Cardiovascular Health at the University of Liverpool and Adjunct Professor of Cardiovascular Health at Aalborg University, Denmark.  Atrial fibrillation is Dr Lane's main research interest focused on bleeding and stroke risk stratification and patient-centred research.  She is a co-author of both the CHA2DS2-VASc stroke risk stratification score and the HAS-BLED bleeding risk score.  Her other main research interest is how AF affects quality of life and psychological well-being, patient education and patients’ perceptions of AF and medication adherence.  Dr Lane was the Chair for a European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) position document on ‘Cardiac tachyarrhythmias and patient values and preferences for their management’ and is a member of American College of Chest Physicians guidelines on antithrombotic therapy in AF patients.

Professor Dan Lasserson 

Professor of Ambulatory Care at the University of Birmingham. Professor Lasserson works in acute ambulatory medical care at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital and has previously worked in General Practice as well as hospital medicine. His research group tackles the challenge of meeting the growing need for delivery of acute medical care within increasingly constrained resources. His research programme includes mixed methods studies of point of care diagnostics, risk prediction, clinical decision making and patient and carer experience. He also leads the ‘Ageing, Frailty and Resilience’ development theme in the University’s Institute for Global Innovation with initial projects planned in Botswana and Brazil.

Ms Trudie Lobban

 founder and CEO of the Arrhythmia Alliance, a coalition of charities, patient groups, healthcare professionals, policymakers and industry representatives. Under her lead, the Alliance successfully lobbied for a new chapter on arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death to be included in the UK’s National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease on Arrhythmia’s. In 2007, Ms Lobban established the Atrial Fibrillation Association, which provides information, support, education and awareness to AF patients and healthcare professionals. 

Dr Semira Maneseki Holland

Senior Clinical Lecturer in Public Health at the University of Birmingham with an interest in health systems, maternal-child health and low- and middle-income countries. Dr Holland is a UK based public health physician with a paediatric background and has worked in clinical medicine, health systems delivery and policy, public health and research in the UK and developing countries for over 20 years. Her low and middle-income country experience includes research (such as large community trials in challenging academic environments), work for WHO and UNICEF on country based programmes and at WHO HQ, with Ministries of Health to advise on strategy and policy development and at the CEO level in International Health Non-governmental Organisations (NGO) coordinating delivery of integrated health services (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan from village to provincial hospitals) and operations of training colleges.

Dr David Moore

Senior Lecturer at the University of Birmingham, specialises in directing multidisciplinary teams of researchers undertaking systematic reviews, health technology assessments and associated research. He is co-Director of the MSc in Health Research Methods and a curriculum advisor and previous deputy director of the MSc in Public Health at the University of Birmingham. He leads a post-graduate taught module in Systematic Reviews and Evidence Syntheses and teaches systematic reviews and evidence synthesis at postgraduate and undergraduate level. 

Professor Krishnan Nirantharakumar (Krish)

Theme lead for health informatics and Professor in Health Data Science and Public Health at the Institute of Applied Health Research. Prof Nirantharakumar has substantial experience in health informatics research (data science and implementation science). His particular interests are in developing novel digital tools that enable efficient healthcare systems and expedite health care research. He is the founder of the West Midlands Health Informatics Network and innovator of the Automated Clinical Epidemiology Studies (ACES) tool. The latter innovation has led to a UKRI Innovation Fellowship with HDR UK. His long term mission is to lead a global health informatics team to improve the health and wellbeing of the disadvantaged communities in low and middle income countries.

Professor Isabelle Szmigin

Professor of Marketing and Deputy Dean of Birmingham Business School at the University of Birmingham. Professor Szmigin's research interests lie in the area of conceptualising consumer behaviour and understanding the social and policy issues concerned with consumption. She has held a number of grants and most recently was Co-Investigator on an Alcohol Research UK Grant looking at alcohol marketing to young people via social media and its implication for advertising codes of practice.

Professor Gustavo Gusso

Professor of General Practice, University of São Paulo, Brazil and a practicing family doctor. At the University of São Paulo he wrote and is the current coordinator of the residency program of family and community medicine as well as the rotation in family medicine for undergraduates. He has Master of Clinical Science in Family Medicine at University of Western Ontario, Canada and PhD in Medicine at University of São Paulo. He was coordinator of the National Strategy for Medical Education at Ministry of Health and president of Brazilian Society of Family and Community Medicine. He is the main editor of Brazilian Textbook of Family Medicine that won the most important scientific award at Brazil in 2013. Gustavo Gusso is currently editor of Brazilian Journal of Family and Community Medicine.

Professor Yutao Guo

Professor of Cardiology at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China. She is also a chief Physician, Division of Cardiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital. Her medical expertise is in arrhythmia, antithrombotic management, and cardiovascular disease  prevention.

Dr Mahesan Guruparan

Consultant Cardiologist - Teaching Hospital Jaffna. Dr Guruparan is a general cardiologist involved in outpatient care as well as interventional cardiology including coronary angiograms and PCI.

Lindsey Cooke

has been a senior manager in both the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham and the NHS for many years. In the University she has managed both research and teaching activities and been responsible for one of the largest Institute budgets in the Medical School. She has led on the annual business planning process, budget management and forecasts, staff and project management. In the NHS she has managed most medical specialties including Cardiology and a Stroke Unit.

Tiffany Gooden

Research fellow in the Institute of Applied Health at the University of Birmingham.  Tiffany completed her MPH at the University in 2016 then joined shortly after as a contracted researcher working on global maternity and child health projects. She joined the Global AF group in August 2020 and is working with the Brazil and Sri Lanka team on various projects including a large community-based cohort study, mixed-methods studies and systematic reviews.

Dr Jingya Wang

Research fellow in the Institute of Applied Health at the University of Birmingham.  Jingya completed her MPH (2015) and PhD (2019) at the University and has since been working across various projects in the institute, including the Global AF projects in China.

Dr Wahbi El-Bouri 

Tenure Track Fellow at the University of Liverpool and the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences. Dr El-Bouri’s expertise is in biomedical engineering with experience in using engineering principles, through in-silico modelling and data analysis, to help understand cardiovascular disease and its progression. He has worked across all country partners to help build capacity for machine learning methods and to apply such methods using locally available data.

Dr Alessandra C Goulart 

Senior medical researcher and assistant professor at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dr Goulart has expertise in the field of general practice, preventive medicine, and clinical epidemiology working mainly in the field of cardiovascular risk factors, lifestyle, chronic non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs), such as coronary heart disease, stroke, mood disorders, anxiety, depression, cognitive impairment, and headache. Dr Goulart is working throughout all themes of the Brazilian work packages.

Dr Itamar Santos 

Assistant professor at the University of Sao Paulo. Dr Santos is working mainly on theme 1 and collaborating with Dr El-Bouri on various machine learning analyses.

Dr Ana Carolina Varella 

Researcher at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil. Dr Varella is working on the Pathway and Handover studies.

Dr Elisabete Paschoal 

Trained anthropologist working on the qualitative projects from theme 3 of the Brazilian work packages.

Dr Balachandran Kumarendran 

Chair professor and consultant community physician at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Dr Kumarendran is mainly working on theme 2 of the Sri Lankan work packages.

Ms Powsiga Uruthirakumar 

Graduate research fellow at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Powsiga is working on various projects within theme 1 of the Sri Lankan work packages and is also undertaking a systematic review looking at quality of life in AF patients.

Mr Vethanayagam Antony Sheron 

Graduate research fellow at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Sheron is working on theme 2 of the Sri Lankan projects and is also undertaking a systematic review looking at diagnostic mHealth tools for detecting AF.

Mr Kaneshamoorthy Shribavan  

Graduate research fellow at the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. Shri is working on theme 1 of the Sri Lankan work packages including the health economics evaluation. 

Dr Hao Wang 

Senior physician at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China.

Dr Xiaojing Li 

Physician at the Shanxi DaYi Hospital, Shanxi, China.

Dr Yang Li 

Physician at the Shanxi DaYi Hospital, Shanxi, China.

Dr Aichun Qiao 

Physician at the Shanxi DaYi Hospital, Shanxi, China.

Miss Meihui Tai 

Master student supervised by Prof. Yutao Guo at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital, Beijing, China.

Professor Jeroen Bax

Professor of Cardiology at Leiden University and immediate past President of the European Society of Cardiology. His main research interests relate to imaging in clinical cardiology. In particular, the integration of different imaging techniques (nuclear cardiology, echocardiography, multi-slice computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging) into clinical issues.

Professor John Camm

Professor of Clinical Cardiology at St George’s University of London, consultant cardiologist at St George’s NHS Foundation Trust and past President of the European Heart Rhythm Association. He specialises in a number of cardiac issues which include: cardiac arrhythmias, sudden cardiac death, inherited channel pathyatrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, cardiomyopathy and pacemakers. He also works with a focus on cardiac re-synchronisation therapy and ventricular repolarisation as well as other cardiac treatments.

Professor Chern-Ern Chiang

Professor of Medicine at the National Yang-Ming University and Director of the General Clinical Research Center (GCRC), Taipei Veterans General Hospital. He is also an attending Physician, Division of Cardiology, Department of Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital. His medical expertise is in arrhythmia, hypertension, hyperlipidaemia and clinical trials.

Professor Ken Okumura

is a Cardiologist from Japan and served as Professor of Medicine, Hirosaki University School of Medicine, Aomori, Japan, from 1996 to 2016. He is now working at Saiseikai Kumamoto Hospital Cardiovascular Centre, Kumamoto, Japan and is involved mainly in the management of patients with cardiac arrhythmias, catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation and clinical research. He also served as the President of the Japanese Heart Rhythm Society (JHRS) from 2011 to 2016 and was Congress Chairman of the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society in 2017 (APHRS 2017) held in Yokohama, Japan. His main interest is the managements of cardiac arrhythmias, especially atrial fibrillation, including anticoagulation therapy, rate and rhythm control and catheter ablation with the latest technologies.

Assistant Professor Dr Tatjana Potpara

Assistant Professor of Cardiology, Clinical Center of Serbia is a cardiologist with a 25-year clinical experience in a large academic hospital, and also runs a busy outpatient AF clinic. She is involved in teaching at the undergraduate and postgraduate level at Belgrade University School of Medicine, and serves as member of a PhD Collegium, University of Modena, Italy. Her main research areas involve cardiac arrhythmias, particularly AF. Dr Potpara is dedicated towards integrating the underrepresented countries in South-Eastern Europe into the ESC/EHRA research and other activities and strengthening the international collaboration. Her collaboration network involves most countries in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Australia and Asia.

Mellanie True Hills 

is an atrial fibrillation patient (13 years afib-free), non-profit CEO, internationally-known author, Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), and passionate advocate for patients. She is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the American Foundation for Women’s Health and StopAfib.org, a global atrial fibrillation patient advocacy organization. The organization’s mission is to help those living with atrial fibrillation to get their lives back and to rid the world of strokes caused by atrial fibrillation.

Successes include creating Atrial Fibrillation Awareness Month and lobbying with other organizations to gain U.S. Senate designation of September as National Atrial Fibrillation Awareness Month. Mellanie is the co-creator along with the American Heart Association of MyAFibExperience.org. She also served on the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s PCORnet Patient Council.

Professor Dame Caroline Watkins

Professor of Stroke and Older People’s Care, Director of Research and Innovation; Director of Lancashire Clinical Trials Unit and Director of Lancashire research Institute For global hEalth and wellbeing (LIFE) is the only nursing professor of her kind in the UK.  She leads one of the largest multi-disciplinary teams of researchers with a large portfolio of clinically relevant research and contributes to stroke service development at local, national and international level for over 30 years.

She is passionate about stroke research and improvements in patient care.  She actively encourages staff at all levels of their research career and has been actively supportive of the development of Early Career Researchers. Her multidisciplinary team of researchers have a large portfolio of clinically relevant stroke research and contribute to stroke service development locally, nationally and internationally.