The NICHE Team

Alison is a professor of infectious diseases at University College London. She also works as a consultant in infectious diseases and HIV in the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. She has long-standing research interests in HIV which include research on HIV transmission, and prevention. She was the lead author on the PARTNER 1 and 2 studies which provided the scientific evidence to underpin the U=U statement. Alison also chairs the BHIVA guidelines group on PrEP. Alison is interested in improving the long-term health and wellbeing of people living with HIV and is the principal investigator on the NICHE programme of research.

Fiona is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at University College London and is the co-principal investigator on the NICHE programme of research. Fiona’s research interests include the treatment and prognosis of HIV, the impact of social and economic factors, mental health and HIV, and HIV prevention. She has extensive experience in designing and analysing research studies and clinical trials among people living with HIV, or at risk of HIV. She has a particular interest in questionnaire studies and the importance of participant-reported measures of health.

Alex has been living with HIV since 2009. At Terrence Higgins Trust, Alex leads on HIV Prevention England’s work to build strategic partnerships across the health system and with key stakeholders, and supports capacity and skills development within the HIV sector. Alex is also Chair of the UK-CAB (HIV Treatment Advocates Network). As Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) Lead within NICHE, Alex is passionate about meaningfully involving people with HIV in the research and ensuring their voices are heard within the study outcomes.

Janey’s background is in HIV and sexual health nursing and for the last 10 years she has been working in HIV research at UCL managing large observational cohort studies stuch as the PARTNER study and the AURAH and AURHA2 study. Janey will be programme managing NICHE.

Andrew is an epidemiologist from a biostatistical background with a strong interest in addressing questions of public health significance.  He has worked extensively in design and analysis of HIV observational study research (including with EuroSIDA, UK CHIC, UK HIV Drug resistance database, UK Seroconverter Register, CASCADE, and COHERE), and randomized trials (SMART, START).  In the past few years he has developed with colleagues an individual-based simulation model of HIV transmission, progression and the effect of ART in order to address public health questions not fully addressable in trials or analyses of observational studies, both in developed and developing country contexts.   This involves a strong element of economic evaluation / cost effectiveness analysis.

Colette works as a medical statistician/epidemiologist, primarily in the HIV research field. Her work mostly focuses on observational cohort studies of HIV positive individuals, such as the Royal Free HIV Database and the D:A:D Study. She is interested in the long-term clinical, virological and immunological outcomes of antiretroviral therapy to treat HIV infection. A further research area is the potential long-term side effects of antiretroviral therapy. This frequently involves applying novel statistical methods in order to be able to answer clinically relevant questions.

Dr Fiona Burns is HIV Clinical Lead at the Royal Free Hospital, London and Professor in Sexual Health and HIV at University College London. Her research interests are in the social and behavioural dimensions of HIV/STI epidemiology, with a particular interest in health care access, engagement and social inequalities, as well as migrant health. She co-led on the BHIVA Standards of Care for people living with HIV 2018

Meaghan is lead epidemiologist in the UKHSA National COVID-19 Epidemiology Cell and in her spare time she explains epidemiological data on Twitter. Prior to COVID-19 Meaghan worked for 10 year in national HIV surveillance and developed Positive Voices a national HIV patient survey as part of her PhD thesis.

Ryan Ottridge is a trial management team leader at the University of Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit. For the NICHE project, he will be responsible for the day to day oversight of the clinical trial phase.

Dr Michael Brady is a Sexual Health and HIV Consultant at King’s College Hospital and the first National Adviser for LGBT Health. Dr Brady is also Medical Director of the Terrence Higgins Trust. His role in NICHE  will be to advise and support on how best to engage and work with all relevant stakeholders to ensure findings are translated into policy, commissioning and service delivery.

Prof Lorraine Sherr is a Clinical Psychologist and head of the Health Psychology Unit.  She studied Psychology at Warwick University with a PhD on the importance of Communication in health care and  a wide research portfolio encompassing empirical research, theory, review, evidence, policy and advocacy.  Prof Sherr has worked at National and International levels on HIV, mental health, treatment adherence, switching, gender, pregnancy, families, children, parenting, palliative care, discrimination and HIV infection.

Carl is a medical sociologist and implementation scientist with a wide range of research interests across the sociology of health technologies and of human relations In the healthcare systems of the advanced economies. This work has ranged from very applied evaluation studies in health services research (especially in qualitative studies nested within randomised controlled trials) through studies of the social construction of professional-patient relations and different disease entities, to fundamental social science research on the dynamics of human agency under conditions of constraint.

Vanessa is consultant physician in Sexual Health and HIV with expertise in access to healthcare by marginalised groups and implementing complex interventions in clinical settings. She is on the medical board of NAZ, a charity dedicated to improving the sexual health of BAME communities.

Professor Harding is Herbert Dunhill Chair on Palliative Care & Rehabilitation. In February 2021 he was appointed to the role of Vice Dean (International) of the Florence Nightingale Faculty of Nursing, Midwifery & Palliative Care. At the Cicely Saunders Institute Richard directs the WHO Collaborating Centre for Palliative Care. He is Vice Chair of the World Hospice Palliative Care Alliance and founding Director of the Centre for Global Health Palliative Care. He holds a visiting Chair in Palliative Care at the University of Cape Town. Richard did his first degree in Social Anthropology and Sociology, followed by a master’s degree.

Marc is Professor of Medicine at UCL, and Consultant in Respiratory and HIV Medicine at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. He leads several national infection groups. His research interests align with his clinical work.

Andrew is a Professor of Health Economics and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.  He has expertise in all areas of health economic evaluation and has particularly focused on statistical methods for cost-effectiveness analysis.  This includes statistical methods for estimation of parameters for cost-effectiveness models as well as statistical analysis of cost-effectiveness alongside clinical trials.  He also has a more general interest in epidemiological methods, in particular the use of prognostic scoring methods for predicting health outcomes and the relationship with heterogeneity in cost-effectiveness. He is author of two successful textbooks, one published by OUP entitled Decision Modelling for Health Economic Evaluation, and another published by Wiley entitled Statistical Methods for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis.