I am British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and a Consultant Cardiologist at Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Trust. I joined The University of Manchester in April 2013 as Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, and from August 2016 serve as the Director of the Cardiovascular, Metabolic and Nutritional Science Research Domain in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health.
I was a preclinical student at the University of St. Andrews and qualified in medicine from Oxford in 1988. Following junior clinical posts, I was an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellow in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford from 1993 to 1996. I completed training in clinical cardiology and set up my research group in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Oxford 1997-2000 under the mentorship of Professor Hugh Watkins. In 2001 I moved to a Senior Lectureship at Newcastle University, where I founded the Molecular Cardiovascular Research Group. I was awarded a BHF Personal Chair in 2008 which was renewed in 2013. I have held British Heart Foundation programme grant funding since 2003.
I have been an active clinical cardiologist throughout my scientific career. Between 2001 and 2013 I practiced as a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist; during most of this time my personal procedure volumes were in the top 10% of all operators nationally. Presently, my clinical focus is on inherited cardiovascular diseases, where I am part of an integrated service for affected patients and their families provided with colleagues in the Manchester Heart Centre and the Manchester Centre for Genomic Medicine.
I currently serve as Chair of the UK Biobank International Scientific Advisory Board, as Lead for the Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership Cardiovascular Domain, and as a member of the Medical Research Council's Populations and Systems Medicine Board.