MEET THE TEAM
Our team comprises of senior and junior researchers, clinical staff, and surgeons​
Chief Investigator
Ali serves as the chief investigator at ACORN, where his research centers around using resting brain activity to predict individual patients' sensitivity to pain.
Investigator
Fang is a Professor of anaesthesia, critical care, and pain at the College of Medicine and Health, University of Birmingham, and an Honorary Consultant in anaesthesia, critical and perioperative care at the University Hospitals of Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust.
Investigator
Ali is a Senior Research Fellow at the school of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on understanding chronic pain, cognitive biases, and neuroimaging in humans.
Investigator
Helen investigates different types of immune cells involved in inflammation and tissue repair and how they communicate with their surroundings, in health, with age and in disease, with the view of translating these findings for patient benefit.
Investigator
Dr Karwarth's research interests focus on the integration of clinical data and the extraction of information and patterns from this combined information source using modern AI techniques, such as variational autoencoders (VAEs).
Investigator
Babu is based at the University Of Birmingham and an Honorary Consultant Thoracic Surgeon based at University Hospitals Birmingham, the largest thoracic surgical centre in England.
Claire Lindow
Project Manager
Claire coordinates the consortium, data management, finance, procurement, staff recruitment and our regular project wide meetings.
Sajeep Grewal
Senior study Co-ordinator & Project Manager
Saj oversees operational management governance support and study development.
Nadege Haouidji-Javaux
Data Manager
Nadege is a data manager for ACORN. She has designed, built and tested the clinical trial databse using Research Electronic Data capture (REDCap) we application.
Benjamin Bahadoor
Trial Co-ordinator
Ben manages daily study requirements.
Dr. Roksana Markiewicz
Research Fellow
Roxy is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of cognitive processes, pain sensitivity, and predicting post-operative pain and opioid use.
Amélie Grandjean
PhD Student
Amélie is a PhD student in the School of Psychology, at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests include brain mechanisms of pain sensitivity, chronic pain management, and addiction.
Samuel Hannon
Technician
Sam is a Research Assistant in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham. He has a Masters Degree in Cognitive Neuroscience. He is interested in the bi-directional relationship between cognitive function and addiction.
Dr. John O'Neil
Research Fellow
John is a Post Doctoral Researcher in the Department of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying chronic inflammatory disease and the processes governing the resolution of inflammation.
Dr. Rebecca Bedford
Technician
Becky is a Research Technician in the Department of Inflammation and Ageing at the University of Birmingham. Following her PhD in Pharmacy, her interests lie in the molecular influences of pharmaceuticals on omics systems.
Joshua Smyth
Technician
Joshua is a Research Associate in the Centre for Health Data Science at the University of Birmingham. His research focuses on developing advanced machine learning and AI methods to integrate multi-modal data to predict post-operative pain and opioid use.
Ewa Delmaczynska
Thoracic Research Nurse
Ewa is at the front line of patient recruitment and study delivery of ACORN. She is also currently completing her Masters in Leading Clinical Research at University of Exeter. Previously, Ewa worked on clinical research trials inthe Neurology Trials.
Arlo Whitehouse
Senior Research Nurse
Arlo leads the Department of General Surgery Research. He is responsible for setting up and delivering research studies. He manages a team of nurses and supports staff to deliver evidenced based medicine and care.