| Sadie Bennett | [email protected] | I am a NIHR pre-doctoral clinical academic fellow with experience in clinical audits, service evaluation, case reports, observational research studies and systematic reviews.
I have experience in presenting research abstracts / posters at conferences and have been the lead or co-author on peer reviewed publications.
I am interested in transthoracic echocardiography, stress echocardiography, 3D, strain and myocardial work, valvular heart disease and gender health inequalities. | 3D,AE,HF,R,SE,T,TTE,VHD |
| Cathal Breen | [email protected] | Professor Cathal Breen is board-certified by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) as a Clinical Scientist of Cardiac Physiology. His practice focuses around cardiac diagnosis and technology enhanced learning. Cathal has almost 20 years’ experience working in academia, educating health and medical students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, supervising Masters and PhD projects. His PhD focused on the acquisition of expertise within the clinical domain and his published work demonstrates the impact smartphone applications, clinical decision support systems and augmented reality make to health professions education learning efficiency and knowledge retention. He currently leads the simulation and clinical skills department at Edinburgh Napier which facilitates Nursing, Midwifery, Allied Health Professions and Social Work professions education and research. Cathal holds an Honorary Research Consultant position, NHS Lothian, Scotland. | AE,R |
| Robert Duguid | [email protected] | I am a former NIHR Pre Doctoral Fellow with an interest in exercise testing. I also have research interests in the overlap between exercise physiology, cardiac physiology and psychology. | R,SE,T |
| Andrew Fletcher | [email protected] | *Clinical Scientist at Royal Papworth Hospital & Lead for Echo Research.
*NHS England regional training co-lead for Echo for the East of England.
*Has PhD in the Echo diagnosis of diastolic dysfunction and identification of heart failure.
*Part of the Oxford Research Echo Core Lab (ORECL) at the University of Oxford with experience of coding in Python, R and Matlab.
*Research interests include Heart Failure, Pulmonary-hypertension, 3D, Strain, Diastology, Exercise-echo, machine-learning and big-data.
*Details of outputs; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2182-1089 | 3D,AE,HF,R,SE,T,TTE |
| Haotian Gu | [email protected] | Haotian Gu is a Clinical Senior Lecturer King’s College London and Honorary Consultant Clinical Scientist at St Thomas’ Hospital . He was awarded NIHR ACAF fellowship in 2024 to lead on a multi-centre RCT.
He received first degree in Biomedical Engineering, three MSc degrees in Biomedical Engineering, Echocardiography and Health Economics. He was awarded PhD degree in 2017.
Clinically, he received BSE TTE accreditation in 2010 and registered as Clinical Scientist in 2017 and Higher Specialist Scientist in 2019.
Academically, he was nominated for BHF Rising Star Award in 2018, awarded IoY by BSE consecutively in 2017 and 2018 and received AHP Awards by BIHS in 2019, 2021 and 2022. His work was highly recognised by NHS England CSO. He has received over £3 millions of funding from BHF and NIHR.
He is the group leader of GU lab at KCL. His research focuses on innovation of novel cardiac imaging biomarkers to provide more accurate but simple diagnose of heart diseases. | 3D,AE,HF,ICC,PE,R,SE,T,TTE,VHD |
| Safia Hamid-Khan | [email protected] | I have completed an MSc. in Echocardiography and have been working as an NHS echocardiographer for the past 13 years, including in adult congenital heart disease. My research interests are focused on infective endocarditis and understanding the disparities in cardiac care across different ethnic groups. Additionally I am heavily involved in several phase 4 CTIMPs looking at novel medicines for the treatment of hypertophic cardiomyopathy. | AE,CHD,R,TTE,VHD |
| Kjell Hoeyland | [email protected] | With several years of experience as a physician, and in recent years becoming a specialist in internal medicine and in cardiology, I am currently a PhD candidate at NTNU, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, where I am pursuing my PhD in cardiology. My research focuses on novel echocardiographic techniques for quantification of myocardial fibrosis in heart failure. Besides medicine, I have a strong interest in physics, mathematics and technology, and I am grateful that I have the opportunity to include these interests into my research. I have developed my clinical skills in internal medicine and cardiology through my previous work experiences at Haukeland universitetssjukehus and Voss sjukehus in Vestland county, Norway. | 3D,AE,CHD,CCE,HF,ICC,PE,R,SE,TOE,TTE,VHD |
| Emily King | [email protected] | Worley, E., Rana, B., Williams, L. et al. Left ventricular diastolic dysfunction: identifying presence by left atrial function. Echo Res Pract 5, 97–104 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1530/ERP-18-0013 | 3D,AE,HF,R,SE,T,TTE,VHD |
| Gavin McClean | [email protected] | I am PhD graduate of Sports Cardiology from Aspetar Sports Medicine Hospital, Qatar, and Liverpool John Moores’ University. I have experience in cross-sectional studies, and systematic reviews with meta-analysis, and was returned as 4 stars (world-leading) in REF 2021. My research interests include athlete’s heart, inherited cardiomyopathies, and pulmonary hypertension. | 3D,AE,CHD,ICC,R,SE,T,TTE,VHD |
| Sandya Nandakumar | [email protected] | I work as an chief echocardiographer and Co led for physiologist ICC clinic at Kings college hospital. I have post graduate degree in biotechnology and Echocardiography . I have also secured diploma in clinical research. I'm actively involved in research and would like peruse my research in diastolic function , Valvular disease , cardio oncology and myocardial mechanics. | 3D,AE,CHD,HF,ICC,R,SE,T,TOE,TTE,VHD |
| Chidiebere Emmanuel Okechukwu | [email protected] | My name is Chidiebere Emmanuel Okechukwu, PhD, FRSPH, BSE (level II TTE). I am a healthcare scientist specialised in clinical echocardiography. My research interests focus on state-of-the-art, innovative, and clinical research in echocardiographic assessments of left ventricular systolic function in advanced cancer as well as in advanced heart failure. | 3D,AE,AI,CO,HF,R,TTE,VHD |
| Andrew Paisey | [email protected] | Band 7 Echocardiographer working at Torbay Hospital in Devon.
I have recently completed a PGCert in 'Leading clinical research and development'.
I have developed trust collaborations with oncology research and cardiology research teams to aid delivery of CTIMP studies.
My aim for the future are:
To dedicate more time to research, and gain protected time for research delivery in my working role.
To develop national and regional links for collaboration in research. | 3D,AE,TTE,VHD |
| Maria Paton | [email protected] | NIHR postdoctoral clinical academic, successful Principal Investigator with experience in clinical audit, service evaluation, quality improvement, observational research and randomised controlled trials (single and multicentre).
Interested in Heart Failure and cardiac device prescription. Transthoracic echocardiography, strain, myocardial work, systolic and diastolic LV function assessment. | 3D,AE,HF,R,SE,T,TTE |
| Alexandra Savis | [email protected] | I am a fetal and paediatric echocardiographer working both clinically and in research. Over the course of my career I have presented my research in abstracts and posters at international conferences and I have been the first author and contributing author on many peer reviewed publications. I am currently completing the NIHR Associate PI program. I coordinate the paediatric cardiology commercial research program, which includes managing the paediatric cardiac physiologist involvement in all commercial research studies. In addition, my special area of interest is in cardiac disease in renal patients. I am the lead physiologist for the joint paediatric renal and cardiology research program, which focusses on acquired cardiac disease in patients with chronic kidney disease, hypertension, dialysis and renal transplant. | CHD,PE,R,T,TOE,TTE |
| Christopher James Basil Wild | [email protected] | I am currently leading two multi-centre studies into the echocardiographic assessment of pulmonary hypertension; IMPULSE and ADOPT, and I am a contributing author to a number of papers with an overarching focus on right heart function, including the retrospective IMPULSE pilot, published in 2021.
I received the BSE Investigator of the Year award in October 2024 for exploratory work into post-capillary PH. | 3D,AE,R |
| James Willis | [email protected] | I am a clinical scientist with a research background in right ventricular assessment and pulmonary hypertension, contributing to national guidelines and emerging novel research areas in both. I am currently involved with the BSE NSTEP project looking at workforce development in stress echocardiography and I am also working on novel markers for the echocardiographic assessment of pulmonary hypertension. My particular research interest include pulmonary hypertension, measurement reproducibility, strain, right ventricular 3D assessment and stress echocardiography. | |