WellChild Researchers
Dr Richard Reading is a paediatrician in Norwich. His clinical work is mainly with disabled children, maltreated children, children with emotional and behavioural disorders, and children with chronic conditions. He is based in the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and has worked in Norwich since 1993, having trained previously in the North-East of England and in Scotland.
He also works at the University of East Anglia in Norwich as a Senior Lecturer. Most of his work is in epidemiological and health service research. His research interests include childhood accidents, child abuse, children’s rights, social inequalities in child health, infections and allergy, immunization, surveillance for rare childhood conditions and evaluations of complex interventions for child health and welfare. He is a member of the British Paediatric Surveillance Unit, and of the Equity Project which is a collaboration between the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health aimed at improving equity in child health and promoting children’s rights.
Richard is married and has two grown up children. He is a mad-keen cyclist and if it was not for the restraining influence of his wife and children, would spend all his money and time on bikes and cycling.
Dr Gabor Barton obtained his medical degree from Hungary. Following a research programme at Liverpool John Moores University he had been running the Clinical Gait Analysis service at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. His PhD was concerned with the visualisation of clinical gait analysis data using artificial neural networks. Currently Gabor is Senior Lecturer in Biomechanics at the School and Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University. He is leader of the MSc Biomechanics of Gait and Posture programme, a member of the Centre for Health and Social Care Informatics steering group, and network co-lead of the Institute for Health Research at LJMU.
Gabor’s main research focus is the use of Virtual Rehabilitation to train postural control in children with cerebral palsy. He works in collaboration with Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool, The Movement Centre in Oswestry, and MOTEK in Amsterdam. Another exciting new project Gabor is involved in is the creation of a virtual mirror box which may be used in the management of phantom limb pain. The common theme linking such topics is that the learning of motor tasks is possible thanks to the brain’s plasticity. This process can be traced using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and so Gabor plans to explore how fMRI can be used to visualise neuroplasticity in response to Virtual Rehabilitation. For further details see Gabor’s profile at here.
Dr Julie-Clare Becher is a consultant neonatologist at the Simpson Centre for Reproductive Health, Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh and is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. She has a specialist interest in newborn infants with neurological problems particulary those who have sustained brain injury before, around and after birth. She has coordinated national research projects elucidating the prevalence of antenatal brain injury in perinatal deaths and the role of genetic factors in brain injury and perinatal mortality. She is the neonatal research lead for the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the Queens Medical Research Institute, which focuses on the causes and consequences of preterm birth. She leads a team investigating the role of oxygen and infection on the preterm brain. The current project funded by WellChild supports her interest in the role of the intrauterine environment in modulating postnatal adaptation and brain development. She is married with two young children and enjoys practising yoga and playing the cello badly.
Angharad Davies is Clinical Senior Lecturer in microbiology at Swansea University School of Medicine and Honorary Consultant Microbiologist with the National Public Health Service for Wales. She trained at the Royal Free Hospital and undertook an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship at University College London. She now divides her time between her clinical commitments at NPHS Swansea and research in the Institute of Life Science, The School of Medicine, Swansea University. Her research interests are bacterial dormant states, particularly in staphylococci, rapid clinical diagnostics and the gastro-intestinal parasite Cryptosporidium, in collaboration with the UK Cryptosporidium Reference Unit at NPHS Microbiology Swansea. Recent projects have included a large epidemiological survey of Cryptosporidium carriage in healthy pre-school children in London and Swansea, which underpins her current work on carriage in immunocompromised children who are at high risk of severe disease.
Professor Georgina Mieli-Vergani is Professor of Paediatric Hepatology, Academic Head of the Department of Liver Studies and Transplantation, and Vice Head of the Division of Gene and Cell Based Therapy, King’s College London School of Medicine, Denmark Hill Campus. She is the Director of the Supra Regional Paediatric Liver Centre at King’s College Hospital NHS Trust, London. In this centre, which is the largest referral unit for children with liver disease worldwide, novel medical and surgical managements are pioneered, including new modes of treatment of autoimmune and viral hepatitis, living-related liver transplantation, non heart beating donor liver transplantation, auxiliary liver transplantation and isolated hepatocyte transplantation. Her research interests include mechanisms of liver damage in autoimmune and viral disease, mechanisms involved in liver transplant rejection and tolerance, new treatments for children with chronic viral hepatitis. She has over 300 peer reviewed publications and has contributed to several textbooks’
Dr Timothy Barrett is consultant paediatrician in endocrinology and diabetes at Birmingham Children's Hospital and Professor of Paediatrics at The University of Birmingham. He trained at The Royal London Hospital, Great Ormond Street, Exeter and Birmingham.
He now spends half his time at Birmingham Children's Hospital looking after children with diabetes and other hormone problems; and half his time researching in the medical school, University of Birmingham. He is clinical lead for the Diabetes Service at the hospital, caring for 320 children with diabetes. He also looks after children with general hormone problems such as short stature, puberty problems and hormone complications as a result of other illnesses. His main areas of research interest are the inherited forms of childhood diabetes such as Wolfram syndrome, and obesity related diabetes in childhood. He has a research team based in the Institute of Biomedical Research, The Medical School, Birmingham, studying inherited forms of diabetes. He is also Program Director for the new Clinical Research Facility at Birmingham Children's Hospital; and is developing a national study of type 2 diabetes in children. He is married with two school age daughters.
Professor Reza Razavi is Professor of Paediatric Cardiovascular Science at King’s College London and Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Cardiology at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He is also Director of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Cardiac MR service which has a focus on children and adults with congenital heart disease. His research interest is MR guided cardiac catherisation and the use of MRI in the study of congenital heart disease.
Dr Gerald Greil worked in the German Heart Centre in Munich/Germany, Children's Hospital Tuebingen/Germany and at Boston Children's Hospital (Harvard University)/USA before commencing as Senior Clinical Lecturer at King's College London and Consultant Paediatric cardiologist at the Evelina Children's Hospital. His main interest is cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and has published in several peer reviewed journals.
Professor Linda Franck, the United Kingdom's first Professor and Chair of Children's Nursing Research has been a leading member of the WellChild Pain Research Centre since 1999. Professor Franck was formerly the Director of Critical Care Services at Children's Hospital Oakland, California and Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. She has over 20 years experience in neonatal and paediatric nursing and pain research and has pioneered pain assessment and management techniques for acutely chronically ill children and has played an important role in the implementation of family-centred care for hospitalised children. As a result, the WellChild Pain Research Centre has become a focus for children’s nursing research in the UK. Professor Franck is the unit head of the Patient Care Research and Innovation Centre (PCRIC) at UCL/ICH, which is the only Centre of it kind in the UK dedicated to developing clinical scientists in paediatric nursing and allied health.
Nina Power is the third paediatric nurse to be awarded the unique and prestigious WellChild Nursing Research Fellowship. She is conducting innovative clinical research and receiving advanced research training skills toward a PhD degree. Nina is an experienced paediatric nurse who received her bachelors and masters degrees in nursing in South Africa. Her MSc research investigated children’s experiences of hospitalisation for cardiac surgery. Her WellChild Fellowship research involves an ambitious London-based, multi-centre research study to examine children’s postoperative symptoms and post-hospital behaviour problems, following admission to hospital for surgery. Research in other countries has shown that up to two-thirds of children experience preoperative anxiety and postoperative pain, leading to difficulties getting back to their normal behaviour. We do not know how many British children suffer these postoperative problems and we need to find out because it can affect their attitudes and use of future healthcare services. Importantly, there may be things that the parents and the healthcare team can do to prevent problems. This research will ultimately lead to more effective use of healthcare resources by improving preoperative preparation for children and parents. It is also of interest for the care of adults undergoing surgery, where a similar need to reduce preoperative anxiety and postoperative problems has been identified.
Professor Ian Booth is Leonard Parsons Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health and a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Birmingham Children's Hospital. In addition he holds the post of Vice-Dean at the Medical School of the University of Birmingham and is a non -executive Director of Birmingham Women's Healthcare NHS Trust, Director of the Institute of Child Health at the University of Birmingham, and Director of the WellChild Centre for Genetic Epidemiology.
Ian Booth has worked in the NHS for over 30 years and has been a senior clinical academic in the University of Birmingham since 1985. In the past he has been Chairman of the Academic Board at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and has served on a number of governmental advisory bodies. His clinical expertise lies within gastroenterology and clinical nutrition and he has researched widely within this area, with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. His current research interests are in the pathogenesis of a potentially lethal gastrointestinal disorder affecting premature babies: necrotising enterocolitis.
Nadia Micali is an NIHR Clinician Scientist at the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. She is also Locum Consultant Psychiatrist in eating disorders at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation trust, National in-patient Unit for Eating Disorders. She graduated in Medicine and Surgery cum laude at the University of Messina, Italy, before moving to London to carry out her specialist training in psychiatry at the South London and Maudsley NHS Trust. She was Clinical Lecturer and Honorary Specialist Registrar in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, and has worked in this department for the past six years.
Nadia Micali has completed a PhD at King’s College London on the effects of a maternal eating disorder on pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes and infant development. Her expertise is in the effects of maternal eating disorders on development and risk factors for adolescent eating disorders. Her research interest is in the intergenerational transmission of Eating Disorders and risk factors for adolescent Eating Disorders.
