ASO - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Professor of Endocrinology at Ulster University
Alex Miras is Professor of Endocrinology at Ulster University. His clinical and research work focus solely on Obesity and type 2 diabetes. He has contributed to the clinical management and research in Obesity over the last 14 years, through his work at a high throughput Obesity Centre. The specialist interests of his research Group are the mechanisms of action of interventions for obesity, focusing on pharmacotherapy, medical devices and obesity surgery.
Job Titles:
- Vice - President of the European Coalition for People Living With Obesity
Audrey Roberts: Vice-President of the European Coalition for People Living with Obesity, audrey@eurobesity.org
Job Titles:
- Senior Research Associate in the Behavioural Epidemiology
Dr Andrea Smith is a Senior Research Associate in the Behavioural Epidemiology and Interventions in Young People group at the MRC Epidemiology Unit at the University of Cambridge. Andrea is a multidisciplinary public health scientist researching health behaviours of young people, focusing on the interplay of diet, physical activity and appetite. As part of her research into the prevention of childhood obesity, she is also interested in the development and evaluation of digital health behaviour change interventions.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow, MRC / CSO Social and Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow
Dr Carly Hughes FRCGP, has been an NHS GP for over 26 years. She is also a bariatric physician and works at the Fakenham Weight management service, a Tier 3 multidisciplinary service. She is a World Obesity SCOPE National Fellow. Her research interests include weight maintenance, post bariatric surgery follow up and physical activity for health. She is an honorary Lecturer at the University of East Anglia, and works with the MRC Epidemiology Unit on the NIHR programme grant on scalable interventions for weight maintenance.
Job Titles:
- Research Fellow, Institute of Health Research and Innovation, University of the Highlands and Islands
Dr Daniel Crabtree: Research Fellow, Institute of Health Research and Innovation, University of the Highlands and Islands, daniel.crabtree@uhi.ac.uk
Job Titles:
- Consultant in Diabetes, Endocrinology & Bariatric Medicine / University Hospitals Derby & Burton NHS Trust
- Deputy Chair of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
- Royal Derby Hospital. ( ASO Trustee )
- Secretary / Deputy Chair
Job Titles:
- Programme Manager
- Member of the Peninsula Applied Research Collaboration ( PenARC ) Steering Committee
- Networks Lead
- Senior Research Fellow / University of Plymouth
- Senior Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth
As a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Plymouth, Dawn works in multi-disciplinary settings, having a keen interest in mixed methods research and representing patients' experience of care. Her research focus is on patient need and expectations and how healthcare services are delivered.
Dawn is the Programme Manager and a co-applicant for PROGROUP, a £2.5 million NIHR programme of research about services for people who have obesity. Through this work she aims to generate valuable insights to create better options for people seeking help with their weight change in the future.
Dawn is a member of the Peninsula Applied Research Collaboration (PenARC) Steering Committee for the Making Sense of Evidence programme. This initiative upskills health professionals to find, evaluate and apply appropriate research evidence for their patients.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Diabetes and Endocrinology at University of Leicester
- Honorary Consultant in Diabetes and Endocrinology
Dr Dimitris Papamargaritis is Associate Professor of Diabetes and Endocrinology at University of Leicester (Leicester Diabetes Research Centre) and Honorary Consultant at University Hospitals of Northamptonshire (Kettering General Hospital) with special interest in obesity and type 2 diabetes. He is SCOPE certified and a National Clinical Fellow of the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO). He is also member of the academic and research grant committees of the Association of British Clinical Diabetologists (ABCD).
Job Titles:
- Collaborations Manager
- Education Lead
Job Titles:
- Consultant
- Consultant Endocrinologist and Lead Bariatric Physician / King 's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust / ASO Chair
- Member of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
- Sponorship Lead
- Sponsorship Lead
Dr Georgios K Dimitriadis is a Consultant in Endocrinology at King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Senior Lecturer in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences at King's College London.
He was awarded an MSc on Reproductive Endocrinology from the University of Athens for his work on the "effects of testosterone replacement therapy on energy expenditure of hypogonadal men". He was also awarded an MSc on Obesity and related comorbidities from Karolinska Institute for his work on the "effect of bariatric surgery on Natural Killer cell activity in adult humans". His PhD for the University of Warwick is on the "cardioprotective effects of medical and surgical interventions for the management of obesity". Georgios is the lead bariatric physician for Tier 4 ASO/EASO COM Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery Services across KCH, PRUH and South Sites.
His areas of research interest involve clinical and preclinical studies on medical, endoscopic and surgical interventions for the management of obesity and related disorders (prediabetes, PCOS, CVD, NAFLD/NASH). Georgios is an investigator in several landmark obesity and T2DM studies (SCALE, LEADER, EXSCEL, STEP-1, DUAL-VIII, SUSTAIN 6 &10, AMYLIN, SELECT, SOUL and many others).
He has received several awards and scholarships from SfE-BES, UEMS, Novo Nordisk UK Research Foundation and recently NIHR South London CRN Strategic "Green Shoots" Investigator award in recognition of his clinical research outcomes. He is a SCOPE and EASO UK National Fellow.
He is a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Obesity and RCP advisory group on the new guideline for obesity management. Georgios is a trustee board of directors The Association for the Study of Obesity (ASO) and member of the clinical and science sub-committees Society for Endocrinology-British Endocrine Society (SfE-BES).
Job Titles:
- Partnerships Lead
- Senior Research Fellow / Leeds Beckett University / Education Lead
James is a pragmatic, mixed methods researcher with specialist expertise in the prevention and treatment of obesity. His core interests lie within the design, implementation and evaluation of systems approaches to help address non-communicable diseases.
Throughout the last 10 years, James has developed an extensive research portfolio within the fields of non-communicable disease prevention and treatment. He works closely with local and national policy makers to ensure that research being undertaken, and the associated findings, are able to translate meaningfully back into the decision making processes.
James' early work focused on understanding how, and why, families engage (or not) with weight management services in the UK. He then went on to work closely with SHINE Health Academy; a community-based specialist weight management provider for young people living with severe obesity. This collaboration continues strongly today.
Given that the health and wellbeing is largely borne out of the conditions and environments that we live in, James' current research is predominantly interested in the prevention of non-communicable diseases (such as obesity) through the use of systems approaches. He has led on large scale evaluations of such approaches, developed innovative methods and techniques to gain new insight around these approaches, and co-lead on the development of a large specialist international evaluation network.
Job Titles:
- ECR Lead
- Research Associate / University of Cambridge / Education Lead
- Research Associate at the MRC Epidemiology Unit
- Research Associate Within the Programme
- Trustee Role
Julia is a Research Associate at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge. She is currently leading the quantitative analysis on an NIHR Programme Grants for Applied Research (PGfAR)-funded programme developing and evaluating scalable behavioural weight management programmes for the prevention and treatment of type 2 diabetes. Julia completed a BSc in Psychology (distinction) at the Georg-August-University in Goettingen, Germany in 2011, and an MSc in Health Psychology (distinction) at the University of St Andrews in 2013. She completed an MRC- funded PhD in 2018 at the University of Manchester.
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Registered Public Health Nutritionist
Job Titles:
- Consultant Chemical Pathologist, Clinical Lead - Obesity Service, Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, NHS Grampian
Job Titles:
- Co - Opted Trustee Strategic Review Lead
- Member of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
- Research Fellow / University of Sheffield
Laura is an econometrician specialising in obesity related research. She is an early career researcher (ECR) with a strong interest in researching obesity throughout the lifecourse, acknowledging that experiences at an early age can have significant influences on individuals when they are older.
Laura's PhD was funded by ESRC and NICE. Her thesis, titled ‘A Public Health Approach to Childhood Obesity: the Role of Econometrics', focused on childhood obesity and the relationships between family lifestyles, socioeconomic background and obesity in children.
More recently, Laura was awarded an MRC Skills Development Fellowship to investigate obesity trajectories in older adults. This work uses large nationally representative datasets to determine the types of individuals who are more likely to follow certain BMI (as well as other measurements such as WHR) trajectories as they get older. The research also investigates how these trajectories are linked to health outcomes in later life, with a focus on missing data and how these trajectories can be used in cost-effectiveness analysis.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in Nutrition and Behaviour Change / Lead for ASO Northern Ireland Network / Queen 's University
- Trustee Role
Job Titles:
- Member of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
- Senior Researcher / University of Oxford
- Senior Researcher / University of Oxford / Research and Scientific Advisory Committee Chair
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Chairman of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
- Nutrition and NIHR Advanced Fellow
- Senior Lecturer in Maternal Nutrition / Newcastle University / Secretary / Deputy Chair
Dr Nicola Heslehurst is a Senior Lecturer in Maternal Nutrition and NIHR Advanced Fellow at Newcastle University, and has been an ASO Trustee since 2014.
Nicola is the current Chair of the ASO Board of Trustees, and formerly held the roles of ASO Networks Officer, ASO Education Lead, and led the Local Organising Committee for UKCO 2018.
Nicola's research is primarily related to obesity and weight management during preconception, pregnancy and postnatal/interpregnancy periods, with a particular focus on inequalities and the delivery of health services to improve health outcomes for women and their children.
She currently holds an NIHR Advanced Fellowship and previously held an NIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Job Titles:
- Medicine Physician
- Primary Care Lead
She graduated from Leicester Medical University and completed her GP training in Derby in 2018. Dr Isibor is a certified lifestyle Medicine physician and also completed a post graduate diploma in Obesity and Weight Management. That knowledge has been invaluable in providing better care for people in the community living with Obesity. She is a health communicator for the NHS diabetes prevention Campaign and is involved in various media campaign. She is an advocate for health prevention and has been involved in creating awareness of type 2 diabetes especially for those of ethnic minoritized communities.
Job Titles:
- Co - Opted Trustee Events Lead
- Member of Committee
- Research Fellow
- Research Fellow / King 's College London
- Trustee Events Lead
Dr Zoë Bell is a research fellow and recipient of a prestigious ESRC postdoctoral fellowship. She is directing a portfolio of work on maternal health and nutrition with the broad aim of improving health outcomes for women before and during pregnancy. Her fellowship focuses on food insecurity and health in the first 1,001 days using a qualitative approach.
Job Titles:
- Physiotherapist / Senior Research Assistant & PhD Candidate, Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Northumbria University
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor of Human Nutrition
- Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Glasgow
Emilie Combet is a professor of human nutrition at the University of Glasgow, where she leads a research team investigating the impact of diet on health and disease. Her research focuses on the nutritional and environmental quality of foods and their impact on human health, with a particular interest in obesity and weight management, and how diet and dietary choices influence healthspan.
Combet is a member of several scientific societies and serves as a trustee of the Association for the Study of Obesity, and is the director of the European Nutrition Leadership Platform. She is passionate about translating research findings into recommendations and products; with colleagues across Scotland, she is currently exploring how transdisciplinary research can address the complex challenges faced by our food system through the newly established Scottish Alliance for Food, which she leads.
Job Titles:
- Treasurer
- Head of Costing & Service Line Reporting / Maidstone & Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust
- Member of Finance, Governance and Membership Sub - Committee
Job Titles:
- Honorary Consultant Dietitian
Mary is an Honorary Consultant Dietitian in Adult Obesity, Leeds Teaching Hospitals and a Fellow of the British Dietetic Association. She is the current presidents of the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Diseases (IFSO) Integrated Health Section and sits on the IFSO Executive Board. She has led three working groups developing national bariatric surgery guidelines to improve patient care. The most recent is the "British Obesity and Metabolic Surgery Society Guidelines on perioperative and postoperative biochemical monitoring and micronutrient replacement for patients undergoing bariatric surgery-2020 update."
Job Titles:
- Founder & Director All about Obesity