Speakers

Prof. David Strain, PhD, CEng, FRAeS CMgr FCMI

Prof. David Strain is a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Exeter Medical School, an honorary consultant in medicine for the older adult, Head of the academic department for healthcare for older adults and the chair of the British Medical Association’s medical academic staff committee. Clinically, he runs a community diabetes service for the older adult, works as an in-patient stroke consultant, and participates in the chronic fatigue service. Prior to this, Dr Strain studied at Liverpool University before completing his Doctorate in Medicine on ‘Ethnic differences in the vascular responses to insulin resistance’ at the International Centre for Cardiovascular Health, Imperial College, London.

 Since March 2020, he has been heavily involved in the COVID-19 response team. Within the BMA he has led the academic response to risk assessment of healthcare workers and been responsible for several briefing statements such as position statement on face masks and covid late complications, whilst clinically he is the Clinical Lead for COVID services at the Royal Devon & Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. He has participated in the NHS long COVID Taskforce, has given evidence at the All-Party Parliamentary Group long COVID meetings, and has presented at several meetings including the Society of Occupational Medicine, the Westminster Health Policy and is part of the Board of Science's organisational committee.

Prof. Daniel Hardiman-McCartney, MBE, FCOptom, FRSA

Daniel leads the team responsible for writing optometric guidance, which defines good practice for optometrists across the UK. He has extensive experience in drafting and implementing eye health guidance, clinical summaries and writing a regular thought leadership editorial in Acuity Journal for The College of Optometrists. He has a portfolio of roles primarily working as clinical adviser to The College of Optometrists and dividing the remainder of his time between primary care optometry and community glaucoma clinics in East Anglia. He is a passionate advocate of the profession, committed to supporting all practitioners and ensuring that patient care is always at the heart of optometry. He has helped lead the sector’s and primary care’s response to the pandemic, and utilising telemedicine in a safe and evidence-based way. He has made many national media appearances discussing the importance of good eye health and the vital role of optometry in primary care; he is recognised as the ‘go to’ sector spokesperson with numerous TV and radio interview appearances to my name, including BBC Breakfast and The Today Program on Radio 4. I am regularly quoted in print media with over 120 articles, including The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Financial Times, BBC Online and The Huffington Post. Last year, Daniel led the eye care response to the House of Lords inquiry on the integration of primary and community care, with many of the College’s recommendations included in the final report for the House.  Daniel was awarded an MBE for services to optometry in 2022 and is a key adviser to each nation's government on optometry and eye care policy.

He has acted as a senior workforce adviser to NHSE and as an industry consultant to the likes of Specsavers Optical Group, Which Magazine and investing angel groups. Prior to his role at the College of Optometrists, Daniel was the Managing Director of a small optometry practice in Cambridge and a visiting clinician at Anglia Ruskin University. He has also worked as a senior glaucoma optometrist with Addenbrooke’s Hospital Trust, Cambridge, and as a diabetic retinopathy screening program grader. Daniel has an interest in visual perception and the effects of vision in art. When not in clinical practice, you will likely find Daniel being chased around the park by his sons or enjoying the Norfolk coast!

Prof. Michael Stone, MA, PhD

Michael’s first degree was in electrical engineering and signal processing. He works in the University of Manchester’s Centre for Audiology and Deafness (‘ManCAD’) where he is not an audiologist. His forte is in translating technology into patient-facing devices such as hearing aids, cochlear implants and clinical diagnostics equipment. His research strands are on the perceptual effects of hearing aid signal processing, the diagnosis of hearing loss using novel test signals, and acoustic validation of hearing devices. His collaborations extend to projects on the diagnosis of paediatric hearing loss, implantable microphones and a low-cost hearing aid for developing countries. During the COVID pandemic he spread his wings bit to lead a project developing a facemask that was both acoustically and optically transparent, enabling better communication beyond speech to include transmission of facial emotions. The open-source nature of the design means that, while a “community facemask” design is available, UK manufacturers are very hesitant about taking up the principles for application to e.g. healthcare settings.

He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and Member of the British Society of Audiology.

Dr Rebecca Dewey, PhD

Rebecca obtained a master's degree in Physics with Theoretical Physics from the University of Manchester in 2008 and a PhD in advanced functional neuroimaging from the University of Nottingham in 2012. Rebecca continues to work at the University of Nottingham, within the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre, School of Medicine Division of Mental Health and Clinical Neurosciences, and National Institute for Health Research Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre. She was promoted to Senior Research Fellow in January 2022. Rebecca’s current work covers a variety of projects using MRI to answer questions relating to hearing and balance. In her spare time, Rebecca works with AuthorAid to improve the impact and quality of scientific publications produced by researchers working in low-income countries.

Dr Jacob Brubert, BM, BCh, Meng, PhD

Jacob is an internal medicine trainee and academic clinical fellow in cardiology at Cambridge University NHS FT. He obtained his undergraduate and master’s degrees in chemical engineering and biotechnology from the University of Cambridge in 2012, where he continued his postgraduate research with Professor Geoff Moggridge on the design and testing of novel prosthetic heart valves. Following his PhD and postdoctoral work, he attended medical school at the University of Oxford. He returned to Cambridge in 2020 to complete his medical training and continue his research.

His current research interests are in cardiac imaging, in the research group of Professor James Rudd, and medical device development. When not in the lab, he takes great delight in translating his research into alternative forms, most notably through the medium of dance – his creation won Science’s annual “Dance Your PhD” competition in 2016! 

Prof. Geoffrey Moggridge, BEng (Hons) CEng

Geoffrey Moggridge currently works at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, University of Cambridge. Geoff does research in Chemical Engineering with a focus on diffusion and product engineering. His current project is 'Design, manufacturing and in-vitro testing of an innovative biomorphic heart valve made of a new thermoplastic elastomeric biomaterial'. He has 129 publications on a variety of topics associated with polymeric heart valve prothesis.

Prof. Richard Hall, PhD.

Richard has an undergraduate degree in Physics and was awarded a PhD from the University of Lancaster in the same domain. As Research Professor in Biomedical and Oncological Engineering at the University of Birmingham he leads an active group of researchers in the School of Engineering. Richard is a member of the Institute of Physics and a Chartered Physicist.

Richard’s research interests are related to a broad set of challenges in medical engineering associated with the musculoskeletal system, including bone disease, trauma and/or joint arthroplasty, that is replacement of the total or partial joint. He leads or has led a number of large collaborative grants funded by the EU or UKRI across this space comprising his current UKRI Programme Grant, Oncological Engineering and a International Centre to Centre Award, FractureFX, with ETH Zurich and the University of Uppsala.  As well as investigating new types of interventions, he is an advocate of the development of novel testing methodologies that allow more realistic assessment of the proposed intervention akin to how the device would be used in the real world. This interest aligns with Richard's appointed as a UK nominated expert for ISO Technical Committee 150 'Implants for Surgery'.

Tom Grinyer

Tom joined the Institute of Physics in June 2022 as Group Chief Executive Officer. The IOP is the sixth membership organisation he has worked for in the past 25 years and the third as chief executive.

Tom joined the IOP from the British Medical Association (BMA), where he was Group Chief Executive; during that time he led the organisation through the Covid-19 pandemic and restructured the BMA with a particular emphasis on membership engagement and experience.

Like the BMA, which owns the substantial specialist publishing business BMJ Publishing, the IOP includes IOP Publishing, which publishes more than 100 scientific titles. Tom sits on the Board.

Prior to moving to the BMA, Tom led the Royal College of Anaesthetists, which grew substantially under his leadership, and before this was Executive Director of Strategy, Communications and Policy at the Royal College of Physicians, England’s oldest medical royal college, where he was also interim Chief Executive and introduced the organisation’s first ever strategy in its 500-year history.

Member engagement and growth in membership have been constant themes throughout Tom’s career. He leads the IOP as it emerges from Covid-19, continues to tackle climate change, seeks to cement science and physics in the post-Brexit landscape, and faces up to the equality, diversity and inclusion challenges in the science sector.