ISARIC People

Prof Peter Horby

Prof Peter Horby

Job title - Executive Director

Sir Peter Horby is the Executive Director of ISARIC. He is also the Moh Family Foundation Professor of Emerging Infections and Global Health at the University of Oxford and the Director of the Pandemic Sciences Institute.

He trained in medicine at University College London and went on to specialise in emerging and epidemic prone infectious diseases. Over the last 20 years he has led research on a wide range of emerging and epidemic infections, including SARS, avian influenza, Ebola, Lassa fever, plague and COVID-19. He lived and worked in Southeast Asia for 11 years, working initially for the World Health Organisation in Vietnam before establishing a research centre at the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi in 2006. The research centre is still flourishing and in 2016 he was awarded the People’s Health Medal by the Government of Vietnam.

Peter is the coordinator of the African coaLition for Epidemic Research, Response and Training (ALERRT), a sub-Saharan Africa consortium on clinical research for epidemic-prone infections, with 21 partner institutions and representation across 25 sub-Saharan Africa countries. He is a member of the UK Government Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) and chairs the New and Emergency Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group.

Peter co-leads the RECOVERY trial of treatments for COVID-19.

He was knighted for Services to Medical Research in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday honours list.

peter.horby@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Dr Gail Carson

Dr Gail Carson

Job title - Director of Network Development

Gail is responsible for building research preparedness capacity through the development and implementation of training activities, membership engagement, managing the ISARIC Career Development Fellowships, and running study activation exercises. Gail was elected vice chair of GOARN in 2018 and is the Research working group lead. Gail is also the Scientific Manager for the Secretariat of the Global Research Collaboration for Infectious Disease Preparedness (GloPID-R).

The GloPID-R Secretariat has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 643434.

gail.carson@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Prof Piero Olliaro

Prof Piero Olliaro

Job title - Director of Science

Piero is responsible for the implementation and support of ISARIC’s clinical research programme. This currently includes projects on Plague, Lassa fever, MERS-CoV and Nipah virus. Piero leads the clinical research team.

piero.olliaro@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Josephine Bourner

Josephine Bourner

Job title - Clinical Trial Manager

Josie is the responsible for the implementation and day-to-day management of the IMASOY trial, which aims to compare the non-inferiority of two treatment regimens for patients with bubonic plague in Madagascar.

josephine.bourner@ndm.ox.ac.uk

 

Dr Ashleigh Cheyne

Dr Ashleigh Cheyne

Job title - Public Engagement Officer

Ashleigh works in patient and public engagement and involvement for the Horby group and for ISARIC. She carries out the administration and organisation of PPIE events for the group, provides community engagement advice for ISARIC partners, ans helps with curation of the ISARIC website content.

ashleigh.cheyne@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Barbara Citarella

Barbara Citarella

Job title - Data and Research Manager

Barbara is a Data and Research Manager in the International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infections Consortium (ISARIC), at the University of Oxford. Barbara manages a large clinical database of over 900,000 hospitalised COVID-19 patients, leads and contributes to analyses using these data, and coordinates international research collaborations among investigators in over 60 countries. Prior to joining ISARIC, Barbara worked in infectious diseases research, and as a scientist in vaccine and drug development.

barbara.citarella@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Dr Jake Dunning

Dr Jake Dunning

Job title - Senior Clinical Research Fellow

Jake joined ERGO full-time in April 2021. Building on his experience in respiratory virus immunology, international outbreak preparedness and response, studying the mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and pathogen transmission, and clinical trials of potential treatments, He supports multiple international ERGO projects. Jake is also working with the ISARIC team and international partners on a process of continuous improvement, research-readiness and collaborative working, to improve outbreak preparedness and mitigate future outbreaks, wherever they occur.

jake.dunning@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Philippe Guerin

Philippe Guerin

Job title - Director, Infectious Diseases Data Observatory (IDDO)

Philippe has extensive experience working in the field for Médecins Sans Frontières and as a researcher for a Wellcome Trust Research Unit in many countries in Africa and Asia. Following three years as a Senior Advisor to the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Philippe joined Épicentre in Paris – a WHO Collaborating Centre for Research in epidemiology and response to emerging diseases.

philippe.guerin@iddo.org

www.iddo.org

 

Nina Jamieson

Nina Jamieson

Job title - Senior Capacity Development Manager

Nina’s role covers designing, coordinating and evaluating research capacity development activities; running the ISARIC Career Development Fellowship scheme and designing and coordinating membership and public engagement activities.

nina.jamieson@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Marion Koopmans

Marion Koopmans

Job title - Coordinator of VEO, Co-coordinator of COMPARE

Marion’s work explores the potential uses of next generation sequencing techniques for outbreak detection and tracking, and co-PI in the FP7 funded PREPARE project aimed at building a pan-European operational network for rapid and large-scale European clinical research in response to Emerging Infectious Diseases with epidemic potential.

m.koopmans@erasmusmc.nl

Versatile Emerging infectious disease Observatory (VEO)

www.compare-europe.eu/VEO

Trudie Lang

Trudie Lang

Job title - Head of The Global Health Network, University of Oxford

Trudie has over 20 years’ experience in running clinical trials, including trials in the developing world, for the pharmaceutical industry, the World Health Organisation and in academia.

With her team and partners, she works to drive better health outcomes in vulnerable communities by enabling local leadership and ground-up implementation of high-quality health research studies.

Within the University of Oxford, she devised and leads The Global Health Network which is a major international collaborative enterprise that sets out to improve health by improving research.

trudie.lang@ndm.ox.ac.uk

www.tghn.org

Asia Mace

Asia Mace

Job title - Administration and Finance Assistant

Asia provides administrative expertise to assist the smooth operation of the GSC. She manages day-to-day administrative activities, including organising the arrangements for meetings and seminars, supporting the Board and Advisory Committee, and keeping membership details updated. Her roles also cover budget monitoring and administrative support on financial matters such as tenders, purchasing and expenses.

asia.mace@ndm.ox.ac.uk

 

Laura Merson

Laura Merson

Job title - Head of Data

Laura oversees ISARIC’s strategy and operations related to the standardisation, collection, governance and analysis of data

Laura.Merson@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Sarah Moore

Sarah Moore

Job title - Programme Manager

Sarah’s role encompasses the monitoring of project execution, progress towards milestones and deliverables, and reporting; ensuring that projects are completed within budget, on schedule and according to contract specifications.

sarah.moore@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Dr Louise Sigfrid

Dr Louise Sigfrid

Job title - Clinical Research Fellow

Louise’s focus is on developing harmonised clinical research tools to support the characterisation of emerging infections globally. She is co-leading the ISARIC Covid-19 follow up study. She also manages a team of researchers which is seeking to advance knowledge into the clinical management of high consequence infectious diseases in low- and middle-income countries.

louise.sigfrid@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Sue Smith

Sue Smith

Job title - Clinical Data Manager

Sue is a member of the team responsible for Data Management on behalf of the COVID-19 global research collaboration; she is currently working on the setup and management of databases for the optional modules. Sue also works as a Data Manager on the IMASOY bubonic plague trial.

sue.smith@ndm.ox.ac.uk

Karolina D Witt

Karolina D Witt

Job title - Senior Clinical Research Manager

Karolina supports data governance and clinical research operational activities for ISARIC. Prior to joining ISARIC, she worked in infectious diseases bench research and as a clinical trial coordinator on several different projects.

karolina.witt@ndm.ox.ac.uk