scientific advisory board

Tom MacDonald received a PhD in immunology from Glasgow in 1976 and then did a post-doc at the Trudeau Institute in upstate New York. In 1978 he was appointed as an assistant professor at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor in 1983.

In 1984 he left Philadelphia and worked at Merck and Co for a year, before returning to Bart’s Medical College in 1985. In 1986 he was appointed a Wellcome Trust Senior Lecturer at Bart’s (till 1994), was promoted to reader in 1989, and given a personal chair at the University of London in 1991. In 2000 he moved to Southampton medical school to head up the Division of Infection, Inflammation and Repair and then in 2005 he returned to Barts and the London, as Professor of Immunology and Dean for Research in the Medical and Dental School.

Professor MacDonald has over 400 publications, mostly on how inappropriate immune reactions cause disease in the human gut. His H-factor is 79 with almost 22,000 citations. He was awarded FRCPath in 1995 and FMedSci in 2002 and elected a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2002. In 2008 he received the Presidents Medal from the British Society of Gartroenterology.

She is Co-Chair of the Steering Board of the Neonatal Data Analysis Unit at Imperial College London which oversees the management for a range of clinical and research purposes of routinely collected data for all neonatal unit admissions in England, Wales and Scotland.

She was Chief Investigator for the NIHR-funded Probiotics in Preterm Infants Trial, and has ongoing interests in the therapeutic role of probiotics and of therapies to treat and prevent neonatal necrotising enterocolitis. She is involved in the Trial Steering Committees and Data Monitoring Committees of a number of current neonatal clinical trials.

She has authored or co-authored many papers in peer-reviewed journals and has an extensive and distinguished record as a neonatal paediatrician, teacher and professional leader. For all of these achievements, she was awarded the James Spence Medal of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2016.

Her studies have informed development of novel treatment strategies for problematic uterine bleeding. Recent studies have included further development of models for studying menstruation and uterine/ endometrial bleeding. She has over 250 peer-reviewed publications.

She has Co-Chaired an International Agreement Process for terminologies /definitions and a classification system for abnormalities of menstrual bleeding supported throughout by the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and remains a member of the FIGO Menstrual Disorders Committee (MDC).

Her expertise in the field of endometrial biology/ reproductive medicine has been nationally and internationally recognised. In 2009 she was elected to the Fellowship of The Academy of Medical Sciences (UK) and in 2012 she was elected to the Fellowship of The Royal Society of Edinburgh (Scotland’s National Academy).

He was a research fellow at The Royal Free Hospital and then a post-doctoral fellow with Peter Parham at Stanford, USA.

He was awarded an MRC Clinician Scientist award to return to the UK to study Natural killer cells and hepatitis C, and subsequently a Wellcome Trust Senior Fellowship award, to research more deeply into innate immunity and hepatitis C.

The major objectives are to elucidate the inflammatory and metabolic mechanisms involved in the maternal-fetal dialogue across gestation and the impact they have on pregnancy outcome and the offspring.