CORT Research Conference 2022 Speakers

Baroness Finlay is Consultant in Palliative Medicine at Velindre Cancer Centre and Honorary Professor of Palliative Medicine, Cardiff University. She established the Marie Curie Hospice in 1987, and the Diploma/MSc in Palliative Medicine in 1989; lead for Palliative Care in Wales 2008-2017 and developed wider bereavement support.

She is President of the Chartered Society for Physiotherapy; Vice President of Hospice UK and of Marie Curie Care. Past-President of BMA, RSM and Association for Palliative Medicine. She is also an Elected member of BMA Ethics Committee and Bevan Commissioner in Wales.

Baroness Finlay has chaired the National Mental Capacity Forum (England and Wales) for Ministry of Justice since 2015 and became a life-Peer in 2001 in the House of Lords; a Deputy Speaker since 2018. Baroness Finlay chaired the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee on Allergy, and is Vice Chair of various All Party Parliamentary Groups (APPG), including APPCOG.

Professor Heather Jarman, Research Director Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions, and clinical research lead for the Emergency Department at St George's University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London.

She is co-chair of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Emergency Care Incubator and holds a Visiting Chair in the Joint Faculty of Kingston University and St George’s, University of London. Her research interests are diverse but include low level carbon monoxide exposure and the impact of frailty on major trauma patients. She holds a number of grants as Chief Investigator and is an experienced Principal Investigator on clinical trials.

Emma has worked for London Fire Brigade since 2004 within Community Safety in a variety of roles. Over the last six years, Emma has led on water, carbon monoxide and road safety, and is the project manager for the CO and Residential Boat Safety Project.

Prior to working at LFB, Emma worked for the United States Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as a Legislative Correspondent before moving to London to complete an MSc in Conservation at University College London.

Dr Steven White did psychology and philosophy at Oxford University, followed by a doctorate in neuropsychology. He went on to qualify in medicine at Cambridge University and trained in psychiatry and neuropsychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London and in the United States. He moved into his current field of clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy after EEG/epilepsy fellowships in the US at the Medical College of Virginia and the National Institutes of Health.

After returning to the UK, between 2000-2013, he was a Consultant Neurophysiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. For a number of years, he ran a Complex Epilepsy Clinic at Imperial College.

He is now in independent practice in clinical neurophysiology at the Cromwell Hospital and the Portland Hospital for Women and Children. Since 2017, he has worked in the NHS at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. He maintains his longstanding interest in the neurobehavioural effects of encephalitis, traumatic brain injury and carbon monoxide exposure.

Sean is a student completing a PhD in the field of toxicology at the University of Hertfordshire. His project entitled ‘Evaluating the use of a novel pupillometer as a sensitive indicator of low-level carbon monoxide exposure’ is funded by the CO Research Trust. He has a background in medical science obtaining a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Medical Sciences and Neuroimaging respectively from Bangor University.

Professor Steele studied for BSc (Physiology) and PhD at the University of Glasgow before taking up a lectureship at the University of Leeds in 1996. He currently holds a personal chair in Cellular Physiology in the School of Biomedical Sciences. His research addresses the molecular and cellular events that underlie excitation-contraction coupling in cardiac muscle and how these processes are modified by physiological adaptations, disease, or exposure to toxic substances. Live cell confocal imaging and electrophysiology underpin much of my work and current projects address remodelling of local Ca signalling in disease, novel mechanisms underlying ventricular cardiac arrhythmias and potential drug therapies.

The cardiac research group at Leeds have a long-standing interest in the effects of carbon monoxide (CO) in the heart. One of our current aims of the research is to identify a drug therapy, which could be used to treat patients exhibiting cardiac arrhythmias following exposure to CO.

In 2015 Beth attained a BSc Hons degree in Psychology followed by an MSc in Cognitive Neuroscience in 2017 from Aston University, Birmingham. During her MSc, having a particular interest in cognition and ageing led Beth to undertake a research project that focused on the use of electroencephalography to potentially identify a biomarker sensitive to neurophysiological age-related changes in brain function that could be used in the early detection of mild cognitive impairment.

Beths PhD thesis focused on the neuropsychological effects associated with chronic low-level carbon monoxide exposure in older adults. The research was undertaken at Lancaster University working in collaboration with West Midlands Fire Service.

Hilary Wareing is the Director of iPiP, a consortium of public health practitioners which also hosts the Tobacco Control Collaborating Centre (TCCC) and the Environmental Health Collaborating Centre (EHCC). She has a background in health service research and management as well as a clinical background in general nursing, midwifery and health visiting. Hilary’s main areas of interest are developing the wider public health workforce and supporting organisations to implement evidence-based practice and improve performance in practice. Hilary is particularly interested in using an asset-based approach in the development of public health initiatives and in gaining and maintaining compliance with public health policies and legislation.

The areas of work she is currently involved in includes implementing midwifery continuity of carer, developing and implementing sector led improvement tools, reducing the prevalence of smoking in pregnancy.

She is currently leading a qualitative and quantitative study to better understand the scale and impact of environmental exposure to carbon monoxide during pregnancy.

Hilary sits as a member of the ASH Advisory Council and the All Party Parliamentary CO Group’s (APPCOG) Healthcare Sub-Group and acts as an expert advisor to WHO Europe.

Mari did her DPhil at the University of Oxford, where she studied cardiorespiratory physiology. Following her postdoctoral research on neurocognitive patterns in patients with smoking-related disease, she became interested in the effect of carbon monoxide on physiology. She is investigating the effects of carbon monoxide exposure at levels on par with air pollution and cigarette smoke.

The focus of her research group is on how such low-level exposures affect vascular and neurocognitive function, embryonic development and select cellular pathways, using a combination of human physiological and imaging research, model organisms and cell biology approaches. The research is supported by the CO Research Trust and University PhD studentships.

Charon holds a Bachelor’s of Science in electrical Engineering from Lawrence Technological University. She spent 25 years in automotive focused on new technology development with General Motors, Denso, and Magna International. She co-founded Global Advance Sales and Marketing in 2011, and helps guide manufacturers and inventors through the automotive sales process, driving growth and profitability.

She founded the National Carbon Monoxide Awareness Association (NCOAA) in 2015, after struggling with 11-years of chronic CO poisoning from four leaks in her homes’ appliances and repeatedly receiving misdiagnoses. NCOAA’s mission is to initiate a global conversation on the diagnoses, treatment, and prevention of chronic & acute carbon monoxide poisoning by organizing available COP information and driving change to improve diagnostics, detection, treatment, and standards.

Adrian has managed the CO Research Trust since 2013. Before joining the Trust he worked in politics for more than a decade - for a Member of the European Parliament, then in Westminster as a Parliamentary Researcher, before becoming Manager of the All-Party Parliamentary Carbon Monoxide Group in 2010.

Andrey has a broad scientific interest with major focus in the inter-relationships among calcium signalling, mitochondria and free radicals, and in the contributions of mitochondrial dysfunction to disease pathogenesis. Andreys scientific expertise is in the area of cell physiology and pathophysiology, and the role of mitochondria, bioenergetics, oxidative stress and protein misfolding in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and ALS

Dr Chris Morris is Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University in the Translational and Clinical Research Institute. At Newcastle, Chris leads on teaching for Disorders of the Nervous System for final year undergraduate Biomedical Science students. Chris has two areas of research at Newcastle: work in neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and in neurotoxicology in identifying how different poisons might affect the nervous system.

As Scientific Director of the Newcastle Brain Tissue Resource, one of the UK’s leading tissue banks for neurodegenerative disorders, Chris also studies disorders such as dementia with Lewy bodies. His research is aimed at identifying the biology involved with the clinical symptoms and potential treatment targets.

Chris has been for many years a member of the British Toxicology Society, and sat for ten years as a member of the UK Government Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Expert Committee on Pesticides (formerly UK Government Advisory Committee on Pesticides). Since 2013, Chris has been External Chair of the Parkinson’s UK and Multiple Sclerosis Society Brain Banks Peer Review Panel and a member of Parkinson’s UK College of Experts.

Robert is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. His research interests are in understanding the pathophysiology of acquired brain injuries such as brain trauma, ischemic stroke and carbon monoxide toxicity. His lab uses a variety of techniques to understand underlying mechanisms of brain injury and to evaluate potential new treatments.