Contributors.

Anndior is a third year nursing student at the University of Brighton.

Adam Rutherford is a geneticist, author and broadcaster who has produced several documentaries and books on genetics. He is the co-host of BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science and is a Honorary Senior Research Associate in the Division of Biosciences at University College London.

Aman Ali is a community organiser who has played various national and local roles in Muslim communities for more than a decade. He’s been the Head of community engagement at MEND, trustee of the East London Mosque and Head of Media at the Federation of Student Islamic societies to name a few.

Dr Anna Lewis is a scholar of Ethical, Legal and Social implications (ELSI) of Genomics. She is currently a Research Associate at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard, where she is directing a project on the concepts of ancestry and population. Motivated by the increasing importance of these concepts across biomedicine, they are doing empirical and normative work around how these concepts are and should be used.

Anumita Sharma is an international brand and market development market researcher. She works extensively with the ethnic minority community in the UK. Through this Covid period she has been working on Covid and the impact on the general public and ethnic minorities. She also works on a public sector diversity recruitment initiative.

Dr. Bilal Mateen is a clinician by training, with an academic interest in health-related applications of data science and machine learning. Bilal is currently the clinical technology lead, and senior manager for digital technology at the Wellcome Trust. He also moonlights as a lecturer in clinical data science at University College London, and as clinical data science fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (the UK’s national institute for data science and AI). 

Dr Ataf Sabir is a consultant clinical geneticist in the West Midlands. Ataf undertook clinical genetics training in the West Midlands and completed a Masters in Genomic Medicine from the University of Birmingham. He started a fellowship in skeletal dysplasia and clinical trials at The Evelina London Children’s Hospital in 2020, where he was sub-investigator for several rare genetic condition trials. Ataf is particularly interested in identifying genetic causes for unsolved skeletal dysplasia cases where genomic testing is negative, via a multidisciplinary, international collaborative approach. Ataf is a committee member of the UK Skeletal Dysplasia group, an active member of the national musculoskeletal GECIP and lecturer at the University of Birmingham.

Dr Garrett Hellenthal is a Sir Henry Dale Fellow working on constructing and applying statistical methods to infer human history using genetic data at UCL Genetics Institute (UGI).

Dr Penny Kechagioglou is a Consultant Clinical Oncologist, the Chief Clinical Information Officer and deputy Chief Medical Officer at the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire. Penny is currently leading on the implementation of the electronic patient record (EPR) and digital strategy at UHCW and is passionate about enabling digital health through innovation. As a senior clinician and leader, Penny is committed to enabling equitable access to care and healthcare excellence.

Dr Sufyan Dogra works as Principal Research Fellow at Bradford Institute for Health Research, and leads on several programmes within Born in Bradford. He does the anthropology of modern Britain, specialising in using qualitative longitudinal research methods in applied health research, public health programmes and how these link with cultural habitats of young people. Through community-driven complex health interventions, he explores ways to encourage healthy behaviours like physical activity, healthy diet, and cultural participation among young people from ethnic/religious minorities and how these can be co-produced to shape public policy.

Dr. Prabhu Arumugam undertook medical training at St. Bartholomew’s and the Royal London. Prior to starting Pathology training, he completed a PhD at The Barts Cancer Institute on pancreatic pathology. He joined Genomics England in September 2019 and is the Director of Clinical Data and Imaging. He is leading the multimodal programme, focusing on the utility of linking whole genomes to digital pathology and radiology imaging. He is also Genomics England’s Caldicott Guardian.

Dr Hilary Martin is a group leader at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with a PhD in Human Genetics from Oxford University. Hilary’s research focuses on exploring genetic architecture in the Deciphering Developmental Disorders (DDD) study, with a particular focus on the role of rare recessive variants and polygenic risk.

Jason is a scientist entrepreneur passionate about translating innovative technologies into better patient outcomes. As CEO and co-founder of Start Codon, a Cambridge based venture builder, he aims to identify the most disruptive healthcare founders and innovations worldwide, seed fund them and leverage the exceptional resources of the Cambridge cluster to de-risk and drive the success of their start-ups. Previously he was CEO of Cambridge Epigenetix and Business Development Manager for Horizon Discovery’s diagnostics division. He also served as an associate at Cambridge Enterprise, the technology transfer office of the University of Cambridge.

Jessica Morley is Policy Lead at Oxford DataLab, and former Tech Advisor at the Department of Health and Social Care and specialist in ethics and AI.

Professor John Bradley is a consultant physician and nephrologist at Cambridge University Hospitals, and honorary Professor of Experimental Medicine at University of Cambridge. He completed undergraduate medical training in Nottingham and trained in renal medicine in Cambridge, before undertaking research fellowships at Harvard, Yale and Cambridge Universities. He is Director of Research for Cambridge University Health Partners, Chief Investigator of the NIHR BioResource, and Director of the Gut Reaction Health Data Research UK Data Research Hub.

John James, CEO of the Sickle Cell Society and the first Black African-Caribbean Chief Executive in the NHS, believes that it is fundamental to acknowledge that inequalities exist before transformational change can happen across our health services as well as in research. Only then will we start closing the gaps in the differences in healthcare outcomes and treatments for all of the people our NHS serves.

Mr Gee has been a veteran on the UK's Spoken Word scene for two decades. Perhaps best known as the "Poet Laureate" on Russell Brand's SONY award-winning Radio show, he has toured the world with the comedian many times. He has delivered two Tedx talks and his work has featured in the Times, The Guardian & the New Statesman. He's presented several radio series: "Bespoken Word", "Rhyme & Reason" & "Poetic Justice" all on BBC Radio 4, the latter of which focused on the extensive rehabilitation work that he does in prisons. He’s an advisor for the Prison Mentor & Trainee charity Switchback and he currently co-hosts the podcast called "The Magic Number".

Nana Mensah is a PhD student at the Francis Crick Institute where he is developing computational tools to interrogate the cancer epigenome. Prior to his PhD, Nana completed the NHS Clinical Bioinformatics training scheme in 2020, where his work supported routine operations in the South East NHS Genomics Laboratory Hub. He has a personal interest in science communication and aims to make bioinformatics accessible to the public.

Niki is the Policy Fellow in Global Health at the Centre for Health Policy, Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, bringing expertise in global health and international development. She works across projects and grants to support the delivery of research and policy encompassing low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and/or multiple country health systems, and provides health system expertise globally, including in the EMEA, Americas, and Asia Pacific regions. Niki also leads operations and research conducted by the Leading Health Systems Network (LHSN) in the areas of healthcare worker safety and cybersecurity in healthcare.

Owen is the Senior Implementation Lead at the NHS Race and Health Observatory. He joined the NHS in 2004 as a Mental Health Occupational Therapist (OT). Prior to working in the UK, Owen worked as an OT in his native Zimbabwe and Botswana. He is also an alumnus of the NHS Graduate Scheme (Health Informatics specialism). He has worked in various management/leadership roles for clinical, transformation, performance and informatics teams, including leading data analyses on workforce race equality at NHS England.