Investigators

Philip Kalra graduated from Cambridge University and was appointed consultant nephrologist at Salford in 1995. He was promoted to Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester in 2009. He is lead of the renal research team at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.

His major research interests include atherosclerotic renovascular disease (co-originator and lead nephrologist for the ASTRAL trial), cardiovascular disease in CKD, CKD-related vascular calcification, sudden cardiac death in CKD and epidemiology of CKD. He has a particular interest in clinical trial development and delivery and is chair of the National Renal speciality group of the NIHR CRN clinical trials network. He has been involved in the development of several large UK clinical trials in nephrology and cardiology and has played a role in amalgamating Cardio-Renal education and research within the UK. He has been interested in Postgraduate Nephrology education for over 2 decades and is editor of one of the most popular textbooks used in preparing for the MRCP. 

Kamlesh Khunti is Professor of Primary Care Diabetes and Vascular Medicine, University of Leicester, UK. He leads a research group undertaking research into early identification and interventions in people with diabetes. His work has influenced national and international guidelines on screening and management of people with diabetes.

He is Director of East Midlands CLAHRC and Co-Director for the South East Midlands Diabetes Research Network as well as Director of a Clinical Trial Unit. He is a principal investigator on several major studies. He is currently an advisor to the Department of Health’s National Screening Committee on Vascular Risk, Clinical Advisor for the Diabetes NICE-led QOF Panel, and Secretary of the Primary Care Study Group of the European Society of Diabetes (EASD). He is past Chair of the Department of Health-RCGP Committee on Classification of Diabetes and, Chair of the NICE Guidelines on Prevention of Diabetes.  He is also Co-Director of the Diabetes MSc at Leicester University and the BMJ Diabetes Diploma. 

Claire Sharpe is a Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in Renal Medicine at King’s College London/King’s College Hospital.  She graduated from University College London and after specialising in Renal Medicine commenced research in renal fibrosis at King’s College London.  She was awarded her PhD in 2001 and is now a clinical academic devoting 50% of her time to research and 50% to clinical activity.

Her main research interests are the study of cell signaling pathways in renal fibrosis, the cardiovascular complications of chronic kidney disease and the renal complications associated with sickle cell disease.

Maarten Taal is a Consultant Renal Physician at Royal Derby Hospital and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham Medical School. He has a career-long interest in the pathogenesis of chronic kidney disease (CKD) and spent three years investigating mechanisms underlying the progression of CKD at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, USA under the directorship of Barry M. Brenner, MD. 

His current research interests include CKD progression, diabetic nephropathy, CKD mineral bone disease and cardiovascular disease in CKD patients. He is the principal investigator for the Renal Risk in Derby study, a long-term cohort study investigating CKD in primary care. He served as co-author of the Clinical Practice Guidelines for Chronic Kidney Disease on behalf of the Renal Association (UK). He is a Section Editor for Current Opinions in Nephrology and Hypertension, Deputy Editor of Nephron Clinical Practice and Lead Editor for Brenner and Rector’s The Kidney 9th Edition.

Andrew Sutton is Senior Health Economist of the Institute of Health Economics, Alberta, Canada.

He was awarded his PhD at Warwick University in 2007 which focused on the mathematical modelling of interventions that target injecting drug users in a prison setting against blood-borne viruses.

Jon Deeks is Professor of Biostatistics, Director of the Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit, and leads the Biostatistics, Evidence Synthesis and Test Evaluation Research Group in the School of Health and Population Sciences, where he also holds a position of Joint Research Lead.

Jon trained as a medical statistician, and has published over 150 research papers and reviews in scientific journals, which include both collaborative health research projects and methodological developments related to the evaluation of health care interventions and medical tests. His work has been funded by grants from the National Institute of Health Research and the Medical Research Council.

He leads the Cochrane Collaboration’s test evaluation activities, and is involved in the NIHR Health Technology Assessment Programme through appointment as Deputy Chair of the Commissioning Board.

Fiona Loud has been Policy Director of the British Kidney Patient Association, the leading grant-giving charity supporting kidney patients in the UK, since 2013. She spent the previous 7 years as Director (previously Chair) of the Kidney Alliance, an umbrella organisation that brought together the main patient and professional charities in kidney care.

She led and co-authored Kidney Health: Delivering Excellence, a kidney community review of kidney care 10 years after the National Service Framework was first launched. This work, with its ambitions for excellence in care from a patient and professional viewpoint, is supported by the Kidney Health Partnership of 7 key UK kidney charities. Fiona co-chairs the partnership.

She is lay chair of the local Organ Donation Committee for West Hertfordshire Hospital Trust and a member of the NHS England Clinical Reference Group for dialysis. She works to promote kidney health and awareness wherever possible, and uses her own experience of kidney disease to inform her work. She chairs the UK Renal Registry Patient Council.

Fiona has been on a number of NICE Development and Topic Expert Groups including Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) Quality Standards, Acute Kidney Injury and CKD Guidelines. She is a member of the NHS England Acute Kidney Injury board, and co-chair of its risk workstream.

In 2015 she became a Fellow of the British Renal Society and was one of the inaugural Health Service Journal top 50 patient leaders.

Fiona spent 5 years on dialysis after her kidneys failed before receiving a transplant from her husband in late 2006. She has a degree in English from the University of Southampton.

Paul Cockwell is a consultant nephrologist at University Hospital Birmingham (UHB) and an honorary professor at the University of Birmingham. He is Associate Director of Research at UHB. He is chair of Birmingham Health Partners Clinical Academic Strategy Group.

He leads a large clinical research team and is principal investigator on several multicentre clinical studies. In addition to research he has long-standing interests in medical education, service development and clinical leadership

Tracy Pellatt-Higgins is a Research Fellow and Advisor at the Centre for Health Services Studies at the University of Kent. She has more than 26 years experience working in pharmaceutical and applied health Research. Tracy is an experienced Statistician, with particular expertise in optimal trial design, adaptive design, mathematical modelling and simulation, and model-based meta-analysis.  She has wide ranging inter-disciplinary research experience in relation to the application of Statistics in the design and analysis of pharmaceutical and applied health research.

Tracy joined the University of Kent in June 2010, she previously worked as a Pharmacometrician at Pfizer (2002-2010), and at Covance Clinical Research Organisation (1987-2002) where she was Head of the Department of Statistics and SAS Programming. While working at Covance, she also served as Head of the Data Management Department for one year. She completed a BSc in Applied Statistics at Sheffield in 1987, and an MSc in Medical Statistics at the University of Leicester in 1999 (awarded distinction).

Paul Stevens trained in medicine at The London Hospital Medical College, completed higher medical training in the Royal Air Force and at the Charing Cross Hospital in London and was appointed as Consultant Physician and Nephrologist to the Royal Air Force in 1990. Following the closure of the RAF Renal Unit he returned to the NHS in April 1995 as Clinical Director of the Kent Kidney Care Centre, implementing a programme of modernisation and development and establishing a predominantly clinical research programme in kidney disease. He has served on a number of national and college committees, is a former President of the British Renal Society and remains a member of the Department of Health Renal Advisory Group.

His research interests include the evaluation of kidney function, the variability of biochemical indicators of complications of kidney disease, the epidemiology of AKI and CKD (in particular the unmet need), and development of information technology based solutions for identification of kidney disease, both acute and chronic.

Neil Dalton is Professor of Paediatric Biochemistry at King’s College London and Director of the WellChild Laboratory at the Evelina Children’s Hospital. A career long interest in the measurement of renal function and the monitoring of progression of renal disease has been interspersed with, most notably, significant contributions to inherited metabolic disease and haemoglobinopathy diagnosis and newborn and ante-natal population screening. The main focus of the laboratory over the last 15 years has been to exploit the unique analytical opportunities offered by tandem mass spectrometry, particularly with regard to multiplexed assays, not only for the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of disease, but also for the metabolomic and proteomic investigation of informative patient cohorts.

Current research activities include the international intervention trial in adolescents with type 1 diabetes (AdDIT), an evaluation of remote ischaemic pre-conditioning in renal transplantation (REPAIR), an IMI funded collaboration to determine new biomarkers for the early detection of diabetic complications (SUMMIT), an investigation into the efficacy of Mirococept for preventing ischaemia-reperfusion injury in renal transplantation (EMPIRIKAL), and an HTA funded prospective longitudinal study comparing creatinine and cystatin C for monitoring progression of chronic kidney disease (eGFR-C study).

Jonathan Barratt is a Reader in the Department of Infection Immunity & Inflammation at the University of Leicester and an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at Leicester General Hospital. He qualified from Manchester University Medical School in 1992 with Honours and undertook his clinical training in Manchester, Leeds and Leicester.

Dr Barratt is actively involved in clinical trials in kidney disease and is a member of the UK GN Clinical Study Group, UK Kidney Research Consortium and NIHR UK Clinical Research Network Renal Specialty Group. He has a particular interest in managing patients with glomerulonephritis and those with advanced chronic kidney disease. He also has an interventional role performing renal biopsies, placing tunneled dialysis catheters and placing peritoneal dialysis catheters using peritoneoscopy.