Meet the team
Professor Timothy Barrett
Leonard Parsons Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health
Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Timothy is an Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Endocrinology and Diabetes at Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital and is also the Director of the Centre for Rare Disease Studies (CfRDS) Birmingham, a Research Director for the Central and South Genome Medicine Service Alliance, and NIHR Senior Investigator.
Find out more about Timothy Barrett
Professor Amos Burke
Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Professor Amos Burke is Professor of Paediatric Oncology at the University of Birmingham and an Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist at Birmingham, Women and Children’s Hospital. He is Director of the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit (CRCTU) and leads research strategy for one of the UK’s largest and an internationally important clinical trials units that delivers a trial portfolio over a wide range of cancers occurring in children, young people and adults. His research is focussed on childhood non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Currently he is Chief Investigator for the innovative platform trial Glo-BNHL for children with relapsed and refractory mature B-cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.
Find out more about Professor Amos Burke
Dr Martin Higgs
Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences
Martin Higgs is a group leader in the Department of Cancer and Genomic Sciences. He is currently Associate Professor for Genomics and Rare Diseases and leads a research group working on the cellular response to genotoxic stress. He is also Deputy Director for the Centre for Rare Disease Studies (CfRDS) Birmingham and Head of Research for the School of Medical Sciences.
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Dr Lee Aiyegbusi
Lee Aiyegbusi is an Associate Professor and Deputy Director, at the Centre for Patient-Reported Outcome Research (CPROR), Department of Applied Health Sciences. His research focuses on the optimisation of patient-reported outcomes (PRO) assessments for clinical research, routine clinical practice, and regulatory purposes.
Lee is the Lead for WP2 of the £12 million LifeArc Centre for Acceleration of Rare Disease Trials leading and co-ordinating the PRO research across the University of Birmingham, Newcastle University and Queen’s University Belfast.
Find out more about Lee Aiyegbusi
Professor Simon Gates
Simon Gates is Professor of Biostatistics and Clinical Trials at the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit (CRCTU). He is a Deputy Director of CRCTU and is involved in design, supervision, analysis and reporting of clinical trials in paediatric cancer and a variety of other fields. His main research interests are in improving the efficiency of clinical trials so that they can provide better and more clinically useful answers, more quickly. There are several ways this could be achieved: use of innovative, more complex trial designs, introduction of more advanced statistical methods than are routinely used in many trials, improving the efficiency of trial conduct, and by better interpretation of results and communication of them to clinicians and patients. Simon is a strong advocate for the use of adaptive multi-arm trial designs, and for the use of Bayesian statistical methods in clinical research.
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Dr Ameeta Retzer
Ameeta Retzer is a research fellow working in the Centre for Patient Reported Outcomes Research and the NIHR ARC (National Institute for Health Research Applied Research Centre) West Midlands.
Find out more about Ameeta Retzer
Dr Steven Blackburn
Steven Blackburn is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Applied Health Research, University of Birmingham. An applied health researcher, with specific expertise in Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement. Steven is the lead for public involvement in NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) West Midlands. Current Chair of the national RDS Public Involvement Community and Public Involvement Lead for the RDS National Office, responsible for the delivery of a national RDS Public Involvement Strategy. He has contributed to several NIHR initiatives to improve the quality of public involvement and engagement in research.