Our Team
We are a dynamic group of researchers specialising in AMR, from five universities, the NHS, the UK Health Security Agency, the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, charities and industry partners.
Register of our Co-Investigators
Our Co-Is work across traditional disciplines for AMR, including computer science, data visualisation, biomedical engineering, behavioural science, environmental science, clinical and public health research.
| Prof. Rachel McKendry (PI, Director) is the Director of the Digital Health Hub for AMR and also the i-sense EPSRC IRC in Early Warning Sensing Systems for Infectious Diseases (2013-24). She holds a joint appointment at the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Division of Medicine, University College London. Her research focuses on smartphone-connected diagnostics with advanced nanomaterials and machine learning for infectious diseases and AMR (Nature, Nature Med., Nature Nano.). She received the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, Inst. of Physics Patterson Medal and IET AF Harvey Engineering Award 2023. Rachel served on the Steering Group of the UK Cross Council Programme for AMR, International Pandemic Preparedness 100 Days Mission Scientific and Technical Advisory Group. She co-chaired the Digital Health Theme of the Topol Review for the NHS. |
| Prof. Ingemar Cox (Deputy Director) is head of the Information and Decision Systems group in UCL Computer Science and a Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is the Deputy Director of i-sense and leads the syndromic surveillance flagship. Together with Co-I Lampos, their models have been adopted by Public Health England and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) for national COVID-19 and influenza surveillance, the first UK example of machine learning models adopted for public health. He is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE, IET and BCS, recipient of the international Tony Kent Strix Prize for Information Retrieval, holds 72 US patents, has a h-index of 82, has 18 years’ experience working for industry (US), and was co-founder and CTO of a spin-out company. |
| Dr Colin Brown is an infectious diseases clinician and public health microbiologist at UKHSA. He co-leads the £1.3M Imperial healthcare-associated infection (HCAI) / AMR Health Protection Research Unit, is the organisational guarantor for the annual HCAI/AMR Division £5.5M budget, and oversees the £10M UKHSA National AMR Action Plan, coordinating 2022-23 Directorate spending review of £15M. He co-leads the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on AMR and HCAI. |
| Prof. Laura Shallcross (Deputy Director) is a Professor of Public Health and Translational Data Science at the Institute of Health Informatics (Faculty of Population Health Sciences, UCL) and Honorary Consultant in Public Health in the Division of Infection at University College London Hospital (UCLH) NHS Trust. She leads a programme of translational research, integrating data science with diverse data sources to improve the management of infection and reduce AMR in the NHS and Social Care. She is a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee for Antimicrobial Prescribing, Resistance and Healthcare Acquired Infection (APRHAI) and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) Social Care working group and led a major study of COVID-19 in >100 care homes (VIVALDI). |
Prof. Davey Jones (Deputy Director) is a Professor of Environmental Science at Bangor University and has expertise in understanding the behaviour and fate of microbial pathogens and AMR in wastewater systems and the use of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) for public and environmental health surveillance. He helped set up the UK national WBE-COVID-19 surveillance programme, and currently leads the Welsh WBE programme for pathogens in the environment.
Prof. Andrew Singer (Deputy Director) is a Principal Scientist at the UK Centre of Ecology and Hydrology (UK CEH). He is an environmental microbiologist with expertise in pollutant chemistry and water quality modelling. He led the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) UKRI-funded National COVID-19 WBE Surveillance Programme, served as Chair of the Expert Advisory Group for COVID-19 and Technical Lead at the Home Office: Accelerated Capability Environment, is a member of the Animal and Environment AMR Delivery Group for Wales and the PATH-SAFE Science Advisory Group.
Russell Hope has 18 years’ experience in surveillance of healthcare-associated infection and AMR in UKHSA. He is currently working as an epidemiologist leading national HCAI surveillance programmes.
Prof. Ed Manley is a Professor of Urban Analytics at the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, University of Leeds, and an honorary lecturer at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis and the Alan Turing Institute Fellow. He co-developed the i-sense Africa Health Research Institute dashboard and is Co-I of SAFER, responsible for the dashboards and wearables pilot.
Dr Vasileios Lampos is an Associate Professor at UCL Computer Science. His main interest is in developing machine learning and natural language processing methods for addressing health-related tasks. His models for influenza and COVID-19 based on web search activity have been adopted by the UK’s Health Security Agency.
Dr Mengdie Zhuang is a Lecturer in Data Science at the Information School at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on Data Visualisation and Human Computer Interaction.
Prof. Molly Stevens FREng FRS is a John Black Professor of Bionanoscience at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, and Deputy Director of the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery at the University of Oxford. She is an international leader in biosensing technologies and regenerative medicine, publishes extensively and has significant expertise and experience in commercialisation of devices.
Prof. James Hetherington is the Director of UCL Advanced Research Computing. Previously, he was Director of Research Engineering at the Alan Turing Institute, along with several other roles including Chief Data Science Advisor at the Joint Biosecurity Centre during the COVID-19 pandemic, and Director of Digital Research Infrastructure at UK Research and Innovation.
Prof. Steven Gray is an Associate Professor of Spatial Computation at UCL's Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Director of Teaching) and an Alan Turing Institute Fellow. He co-leads Turing's Tools, Practices and Systems programme, is a Google Developer Expert for Google Cloud & Maps, Google Cloud Champion Innovator for Data Analytics, Modern Architecture and Machine Learning.
Prof. Eleni Nastouli is a Professor of Virology at UCL and Director of the UCL Hospital Advanced Pathogen Diagnostics Unit introducing novel diagnostics to clinical practice. She is the PI of SAFER, the comprehensive healthcare worker study.
Dr Jo Gibbs is a Senior Clinical Research Associate and Honorary Consultant in Sexual Health and HIV and leads on Digital Health for Infectious Diseases at UCL. Her research interests include digital health, health service delivery and public health.
Dr Alicia Demirjian is a consultant in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Evelina London Children’s Hospital, Guy’s and St. Thomas’, where she is the lead for paediatric antimicrobial stewardship and deputy lead for infection prevention and control. She is also a consultant epidemiologist in the UKHSA Healthcare-Associated Infection and Antimicrobial Resistance division.
Prof. Nic Elviss is Interim Deputy Director of UKHSA Colindale Site and National Standards, Quality and Safety Division UKHSA. She is a Food Examiner and her substantive role is Head of Operations for the Food, Water and Environmental Microbiology Services.
Dr Sarah Gerver is a UKHSA Senior Scientist (Epidemiology) for the sentinel scheme for CVC-blood stream infections in intensive care units in England.
Dr Fabiana Lorencatto is the Research Lead at the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change. Fabiana's research focuses on implementation science and health behaviour change. She leads the behavioural science work packages of several national and international programmes of AMR research, collaborating with stakeholders from a wide range of academic, policy and practice backgrounds.