Appointments made for new Director and Deputy Director of Clinical Research
Left to right: Professor Jon Townend and Dr Richard Steeds.
Professor Jon Townend and Dr Rick Steeds have been appointed Director and Deputy Director of Clinical Research respectively for the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (ICVS), further enhancing the integration of clinical research in the Institute.
As well as being Director of Clinical Research, Professor Townend is Consultant Cardiologist at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB). He is a senior clinical investigator with numerous grants, awards and publications in leading cardiovascular journals. He has published in a variety of fields including cardiac autonomic control, coronary artery disease including acute myocardial infarction, interventional cardiology and cardiovascular disease in chronic kidney disease. He is also joint leader of the Birmingham Cardio-Renal Research Group.
Dr Steeds is Consultant Cardiologist in Cardiovascular Imaging at UHB. He is an international figure in cardiovascular imaging and is an NIHR Advanced Research Scholar. He was previously President of the British Society of Echocardiography, having been Chair of the Education Committee and on the Executive Committee of the British Society of Cardiology. Dr Steeds publishes regularly in leading journals, including Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Heart and associated imaging journals, and lectures frequently at national and international meetings.
In response to their appointments, Professor Townend and Dr Steeds commented: "We are delighted to take up these appointments and would like to thank Professor Roy Bicknell, Director of the ICVS, and others within the management team for enabling this opportunity. We hope we don’t disappoint.
"We have both been working with the ICVS for many years as honorary academics and have always wanted to become more directly involved with the institute. Our hope is that we can assist our clinical NHS colleagues to become more closely integrated within the ICVS so that their research and teaching talents can be more fully utilised with benefits to both the NHS and the University of Birmingham.
"Similarly, by developing working relationships, and hopefully friendships, with our laboratory science colleagues we may be able to assist in the development of their work in to projects that can eventually improve the life of patients with cardiovascular disease."
This exciting opportunity will facilitate greater clinical research collaboration between the ICVS and UHB.
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