Independent Advisory Board

Independent Advisory Board provides independent oversight and expert advice on the CDT programme, academic direction, strategy and operations.

(Chair) Sheila M. Bird OBE MA PhD CStat FFPH FRCP (Edin) FMedSci FRSE DSc is a Scottish biostatistician whose assessment of misuse of statistics in BMJ led to statistical guidelines for contributors to medical journals. Her doctoral work on non-proportional hazards in breast cancer found application in organ transplantation where beneficial matching was the basis for UK's allocation of cadaveric kidneys for a decade. Bird led the MRC Biostatistical Initiative in support of AIDS/HIV studies in Scotland. Bird also designed the European Union's robust surveillance for transmissible spongiform encephalopathies in sheep which revolutionised the understanding of scrapie.

Bird served on four working parties of the Royal Statistical Society (RSS). As RSS's vice-president for external affairs (2005–09), she introduced statistical seminars for journalists and the RSS's awards for statistical excellence in journalism. She supported Straight Statistics by contributing over 100 articles, many on H1N1 pandemic influenza, others on military fatality-rates in Afghanistan by nationality and cause. Bird led the RSS's campaign for legislation to end the late registration of inquest deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Bird was appointed OBE in 2011 for services to social statistics. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2012. In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.

Daniela Hensen is the Senior Portfolio Manager, Research Strategy and Programmes, at Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (UKRI-BBSRC). Since joining UKRI-BBSRC in 2014, she has held a number of positions including peer review process management, and being subject matter expert for bioimaging and data-intensive bioscience. Daniela is now the strategic lead for artificial intelligence in the biosciences and work on furthering the area both within BBSRC and collaboratively across UKRI. She sits on the independent advisory board as the funder representative looking after the CDT.

Giovanni Tonon is full professor, Director for Omics Sciences, and of the Functional Genomics of Cancer Unit at the University Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, Italy. He has a long-standing interest in the identification of genes and pathways associated with diseases, in particular cancer, through genomic and bioinformatic approaches. He has contributed to the development of novel single cell and bioinformatic approaches to integrate various omics datasets. He has expertise in functional validation of disease genes in various settings. Since moving to the San Raffaele Scientific Institute, he has intensified its efforts in the exploitation of genomics and bioinformatic datasets towards the identification of genes and pathways associated with diseases, and their potential use as druggable targets. He is co-inventor in 7 Italian, US and International patents, issued or pending.

Gerald Lip is the Clinical Director for Breast Screening in the North East of Scotland and the Chief Investigator in the mammography artificial intelligence project in the Industrial Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Diagnostics in Scotland. He sits on the Royal College of Radiology Informatics committee, on the Advisory Board of the Centre for Doctoral Training for Biomedical AI in Edinburgh University and is a scientific advisor to the National Covid Chest Imaging Database.

A graduate of Trinity College Medicine, along with his medical degree he also qualified with an MSc in Health Informatics and completed his radiology training in Aberdeen. He is an honorary senior clinical lecturer in the University of Aberdeen.

Dr Lip has published and spoken on topics nationally and internationally such as patient engagement, innovation in breast imaging techniques quality assurance and safety in breast AI.

Fiona Reddington is Executive Director of Strategic Partnerships at Our Future Health UK. Fiona helped to establish Our Future Health in 2019 as our Interim Chief Operating Officer before taking responsibility for building our partnerships across the NHS, charities, and industry. She previously spent over ten years at Cancer Research UK where she was responsible for research portfolios in clinical trials, population research, prevention and early diagnosis. She holds a PhD in Neurophysiology from Kings College London (UMDS).

Samuel Kaski is a Professor of AI in the University of Manchester and Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland. In Manchester he is Research Director of the Christabel Pankhurst Institute for Health Technology, and in Helsinki leads the Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence FCAI and ELLIS Unit Helsinki. He is an ELLIS Fellow and Turing Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute. Samuel has broad interests in probabilistic machine learning, with applications especially in user interaction, health and biology.

Paul Campbell is a clinician with more than 2 decades of clinical experience across a wide variety of disciplines. He is s the Clinical Director for eHealth at NHS National Services Scotland. He is the Honorary Secretary and a Council member at the UK Faculty of Clinical Informatics.

This article was published on 4 Apr, 2022