Dr Hollie White

Course Director
Module Leader - Pathways 1 | Pathways 2

Hollie has a first degree in sports/MSK injury and exercise rehabilitation. Her PhD considered paediatric sports injury prevention, which Hollie completed while working clinically in Rugby Union.

Hollie’s extensive teaching experience includes clinical human anatomy, musculoskeletal injuries, therapeutic interventions and MSK injury prevention, as well as supervision of student projects from undergraduate to doctoral level.

At Warwick Medical School Hollie has extended her expertise in innovative curriculum design. Hollie coordinates admissions activities and leads on optional modules, teaching optional modules across the medical school in physical activity for health, exercise as medicine, and health and care in sport.

Dr Leda Mirbahai

Module Leader - Dissertation
Module Co-Leader - Concepts in Health and Medical Sciences

Leda completed her PhD in the field of epigenetics and cancer. Prior to that, she achieved a Master’s degree in Toxicology and a Bachelor’s degree in Microbiology. She has worked in multiple international research institutes and set up her independent research group in the field of epigenetics and ageing at the University of Birmingham prior to joining the University of Warwick.

At Warwick Medical School, Leda is actively working towards personalising the learning and education experience and to transfer the multidisciplinary and international nature of research to teaching and learning. She is involved in the design of innovative interdisciplinary curricula and assessments, and contributes to several research and education groups.

Professor David Davies

Module Co-Leader, Advanced Cases

David graduated with a degree in zoology and comparative physiology, and went on to complete a neurophysiology PhD. After working as a laboratory scientist for several years he discovered a passion for teaching and became a physiology lecturer, teaching medical and biomedical science students.

At Warwick Medical School, David has had a number of education leadership roles including for technology enhanced learning, and has supervised many undergraduate and postgraduate research projects in health sciences and medical education.

He has developed several teaching and training courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and has taught extensively in Malawi and Tanzania. David brings a wealth of experience of teaching and scholarship across health and medical sciences.

Dr Farhan Noordali

Module Co-Leader - Concepts in Health and Medical Sciences;
Module Co-Leader - Wellbeing: Mental Health & Neurobiology

Farhan graduated with a degree in Psychology before completing a Health Psychology Master’s degree and later a PhD focused on behavioural medicine for non-communicable disease prevention. His post-doctoral career entailed working on the NIHR-funded REACT study in addition to serving as a Consultant Educator for Diabetes UK.

His broad teaching expertise spans an array of Health Science areas including Public Health, Behavioural Medicine, Health Psychology, Mental Health, and Sport Psychology. Farhan has taught from undergraduate to doctoral level and supervised graduate students’ research projects.

At Warwick Medical School, Farhan has a vested interest in enhancing students’ learning experience through innovative and engaging teaching methods. Farhan translates and implements considerable research and teaching experience across the Health Science topics. In addition to this responsibility, Farhan is module co-leader for the Wellbeing and Concepts modules in Year 1; and module leader for the Year 2 Health Psychology optional module.

Georgina Barrett

Undergraduate Coordinator

Georgina has a mainly customer service based background, previously working in hospitality. Her first role at Warwick Medical School was as a secretary within the postgraduate education team.

In her current role, Georgina is one of the first points of contact for our undergraduate students, providing information, advice and administrative support on all aspects of our undergraduate courses working along side Leah Brooks.

Dr Chrystala Constantinidou

Module Co-Leader: Infection: Prevention and Outbreaks

Chrystala completed her undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh USA, supported by the Fulbright Foreign Student Program AMIDEAST, where she studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She then moved to the University of Birmingham where she completed her PhD. Inspired by her PhD mentor Prof. Harry Smith, Chrystala continued working as a Postdoc at the University of Birmingham, focusing on research in bacterial pathogenesis, studying pathogens such as Neisseria gonorrhea, Campylobacter jejuni, Helicobacter pylori and Escherichia coli O157. Emerging high-throughput technologies such as microarrays and high-throughput sequencing became key in these studies and Constantinidou played an essential role in establishing them at University of Birmingham.

Working closely with clinicians and other researchers Chrystala and her collaborators also explored the power of the early high-throughput sequencing technologies as diagnostic tools and for tracking hospital outbreaks. Moving to the University of Warwick in 2013, Chrystala continued her research in applying genomics and bioinformatics in studying bacterial pathogens and infection, and the exploitation of cutting edge high-throughput technologies in both fundamental microbiology research and in the clinical setting.

Chrystala brings an extensive knowledge and expertise in cutting edge technologies and how these can influence both fundamental research and healthcare systems.

Professor Frances Griffiths

Module Leader - Digital Technology and Health

Frances Griffiths trained in medicine at the University of Cambridge and King's College Hospital, London, and went on to become a general practitioner in Stockton-on-Tees. While working as a GP she undertook her PhD at the University of Durham, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, and was a founder member of the Northern Primary Care Research Network.

Frances joined the University of Warwick in 1998 and became founding Director of the Warwick West-Midlands Primary Care Research Network and developed her research interest in the impact of technology on perceptions of health. In 2003 she was awarded a Department of Health National Career Scientist Award to develop a programme of research on Complexity and Health. Frances uses research methods from social science and health science. She works with colleagues from, among others, mathematics, statistics, economics and organisational sciences to study social systems including healthcare systems, health experience, the interface between the technical and personal. She undertakes research with collaborators in the UK and globally including Australia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, US.

From 2020 she was appointed South Africa Research Chairs Initiative Chair at the Centre for Health Policy, University of the Witwatersrand. Frances teaches research methods, digital health and health systems at University of Warwick and research methods for the Consortium of Advanced Research Training in Africa. Frances was Director of Research Degrees for Warwick Medical School from 2009 to 2013 and Head of the Division of Health Sciences, Warwick Medical School 2016-2019. She continues to work as a GP in Coventry.

Dr Erin Greaves

Module Co-Leader - Illness: Susceptibility and Inequality

Erin obtained a 1st class degree in BSc Biomedical Sciences (Hons) and completed a PhD in Developmental Biology. She worked as a postdoc for five years at the University of Edinburgh in the MRC Centre for Reproductive Health before being awarded a prestigious MRC Career Development Award fellowship to set up her independent lab. In 2019 Erin was recruited to the University of Warwick as Assistant Professor.

At Warwick Medical School, Erin leads a team of researchers exploring the pathophysiology of the chronic inflammatory disorder endometriosis with a specific focus on the role of macrophages as well trying to pin down pain mechanisms in the disorder. She has significant experience supervising students from undergraduate to doctoral level. As Medical Lead for the module ‘Illness - Inequality and Susceptibility’, Erin brings significant reproductive health knowledge, and substantial experience of interdisciplinary research skills and project supervision.

Dr Daniel Todkill

Module Co-Leader - Infection: Prevention and Outbreaks

Dr Dan Todkill obtained degrees in Microbiology (University of Birmingham) and Medicine (University of Warwick) prior to clinical practice, and subsequently following his passion for Public Health by completing specialist training in Public Health Medicine. During this time, he also completed the Field Epidemiology Training Programme Fellowship at Public Health England. Since 2017, he has split his time between working as a practicing Consultant Medical Epidemiologist and as an Academic at the University of Warwick. He has extensive experience of providing epidemiological support to outbreak investigations caused by a diverse range of pathogens. This is combined with operating surveillance systems monitoring organisms of key public health importance, and translating information directly to public health action.

At Warwick, Dan is a member of the Communicable Disease Control Evidence and Epidemiology (CDCE²) team. CDCE² aims to support communicable disease control by bringing the most appropriate multidisciplinary research approaches to the best available data to address questions of key public health importance. His personal research interests are Data Science, Syndromic Surveillance, and Evidence Synthesis; these themes will feature throughout the Infection: Prevention & Outbreaks module.

Throughout these research and service roles, Dan has continued to pursue an interest in medical education; having led modules in epidemiology and statistics and contributed to numerous Masters and undergraduate medical courses. He will bring together substantial research, teaching and service experience to deliver a dynamic and innovative teaching experience for module participants.

Dr Dawn Collins

Module Co-Leader - Wellbeing: Mental Health & Neurobiology
Module Co-Leader - Advanced Cases

Case-based Learning Lead

Dawn completed a BSc in Zoology at Cardiff and PhD in Neuroscience and neuropharmacology at Aberdeen. Following post-doctoral fellow positions in neurophysiology and behaviour at the Université Laval, Québec and at the Royal Free/UCL, London; Dawn started at Warwick in 2013 in the School of Life Sciences before moving to a permanent position in the Medical School at Warwick. Dawn ran the neurobiology teaching for Phase 1 of the MBChB for many years before focussing on undergraduate teaching, and has research interests focussed around fear and anxiety and the neurobiological basis for these behaviours. Dawn has a passion for teaching and teaching development and a keen interest in technology enhanced learning. She also serves as Senior Tutor, offering further pastoral support for undergraduate students

Dr Keith Couper

Module Co-Leader - Project planning

Keith is a clinical academic, working between the University and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust. Keith’s PhD focused on the use debriefing as a strategy to improve quality of care following in-hospital cardiac arrest.

In his NHS role, Keith works as a critical care outreach nurse.

At Warwick, Keith is based in the Clinical Trials Unit, where his research focuses on cardiac arrest and care of the critically unwell patient. He conducts a broad range of health services research including clinical trials, observational studies and systematic reviews. He also co-leads the Understanding Research and Critical Appraisal (distance learning) module that forms part of many postgraduate masters courses.

Dr Gurpreet Chouhan

Module Co-Leader - Methods of Enquiry

Gurpreet completed her PhD in the field of drug device development to enhance bone regeneration at the University of Birmingham. She has a first degree in BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences and Pharmacology. She has worked in multiple international research institutes, including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne, USA. She has had the opportunity to be involved in the development of anti-scarring drug devices from a laboratory setting right through to commercial manufacture and Phase I clinical trials at the University of Birmingham prior to joining the University of Warwick.

At Warwick Medical School, Gurpreet is passionate about enhancing the student learning experience by creating innovative research and learning resources and designing authentic ‘real world’ assessments for students. As a co-module lead for Methods of Enquiry, Gurpreet brings a wealth of knowledge in research methods and design and vast experience in project supervision.

Dr Meera Unnikrishnan

Module Co-Leader - Methods of Enquiry

Meera received her PhD from Imperial College London in Microbiology. Prior to this, she obtained a Master’s degree in Biotechnology from Baroda, India. After her PhD she undertook postdoctoral training at the Harvard School of Public Health Boston, where she was awarded an Amercian Heart Association Fellowship. Subsequent to completing her training at Harvard, she joined Novartis Vaccines, Italy, as a Senior Scientist, where she was involved in vaccine development efforts against bacterial infections.

Driven by her passion for fundamental biomedical research, Meera joined the University of Warwick in 2013 as an Assistant Professor. Her work focuses on how drug resistant bacteria establish infections, and she has been awarded prestigious grants from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Wellcome Trust to support her research. Meera has also been actively involved in teaching at Warwick and is module lead in the MRC funded-MSc in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research. She has successfully supervised several undergraduate, Master’s and PhD students and has also been a personal tutor for first year MBChB students.

As a co-module lead for Methods of Enquiry module, Meera brings a wealth of knowledge in methods used in biomedical sciences along with her broad expertise in health and infection biology.

Dr Claire Bastie

Module Co-Leader - Food: Nutrition and Malnutrition

Claire graduated with a degree in Physicochemical Biology and a Master’s in Human Nutrition. After completing a PhD in Metabolic Biochemistry, Claire worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the US. In 2009, Claire established her independent research group at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, USA supported by the National Institutes of Health. She held a joint appointment at Warwick Medical School before permanently moving to the Division of Biomedical Sciences in 2015 where she continues working on nutrient sensing regulation in disease models.

At Warwick, Claire actively contributes to the MRC-funded funded Doctoral in Training Partnership and is the Course Director for the MSc in Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research. She delivers lectures on metabolism in health and disease and supervises MSc and PhD students.

As Module Lead for “Food: Nutrition and Malnutrition”, Claire brings substantial experience of research, and teaching, and aims to develop an interactive, dynamic and reflective learning environment.

Dr Nithya Sukumar

Module Co-Leader - Food: Nutrition and Malnutrition

Nithya is a NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Warwick Medical School and a clinician in Diabetes and Endocrinology. She completed a PhD in Warwick Medical School in the topic of 'Novel Biomarkers in the prediction of Gestational Diabetes' and has a particular interest in area of maternal nutrition and metabolism during pregnancy and its contribution to long-term clinical outcomes for a woman and her offspring. Her research portfolio includes longitudinal pregnancy and birth cohorts in the UK and related RCT’s and she has published widely in this field. She takes an active role in teaching both at undergraduate and postgraduate level in Warwick Medical School. She is also member of the Maternal Medicine-Gestational diabetes mellitus Clinical Study Group and has been involved in writing national and international guidelines on this topic.

As Module Co-lead for “Food: Nutrition and Malnutrition”, Nithya brings together her clinical and academic interest in nutrition and human metabolism and aspires to provide unique perspectives into the health science, public health, biomedical and clinical aspects of this area of study.

Professor Lawrence Young

Module Co-Leader - Interactions: Environment and Genes

Lawrence obtained a first-class honours degree in Medical Biochemistry and a PhD in Reproductive Endocrinology from the University of Birmingham. He then switched disciplines to work as a post-doctoral researcher on virus-associated cancer. After a period of research in the US, he returned to the University of Birmingham as a lecturer running a large research group focussing on the role of Epstein-Barr virus infection in human cancer and on the epidemiology of human papillomavirus infection. Lawrence has an interest in gene and immunotherapy for cancer and this work has resulted in a number of clinical trials. He has published over 230 research papers in scientific journals as well as over 70 reviews) and book chapters in the fields of virology, cancer and tumour immunology. Lawrence has an honorary Professorship at the University of Birmingham, an adjunct Professorship at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) and Visiting Professorships at the Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou (China) and the Faculty of Medicine at the Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogyakarta (Indonesia).

Lawrence was Head of the Division of Cancer Studies at the University of Birmingham from 2001-2007 and was appointed as the inaugural Pro-Vice Chancellor and Head of the College of Medical and Dental Sciences at the University of Birmingham in 2008. He was then appointed as a Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Warwick in January 2013 with responsibility for strategic planning and resources. In 2016 he became Vice-President at the University of Warwick, encompassing his existing responsibilities, while highlighting his leadership in the University’s engagement activities in China and Hong Kong. In 2018 Lawrence was appointed as Pro-Dean for External Affairs at Warwick Medical School and Director of the Warwick Cancer Research Centre. In 2019 Lawrence became co-lead of the new Warwick Health Global Research Priority. Throughout these various management roles, Lawrence has continued to research and teach. He has a strong conviction in the importance of research-led teaching and is looking forward to contributing to teaching on cancer in the first year of the Health and Medical Sciences BSc as well as being module lead for the 2^nd year core module on Interactions: Environment and Gene.

Professor Olalekan Uthman

Module Co-Leader - Interactions: Environment and Genes

Olalekan completed his first degree in Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery at University of Ilorin, Nigeria and MPH and PhD in Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. He received the FAS Marie Curie International Postdoc Fellowship to pursue research on the social and contextual determinants of HIV/AIDS, with a special emphasis on cardiovascular risk factors among HIV infected individuals.

Ola’s current post as Professor at University of Warwick means he is directly contributing to the excellence in public health education training. He is developing and maintaining an internationally competitive Global Health Informatics for Improving Quality of Healthcare research programme including: (1) Application of innovative machine learning algorithms for identifying the opportunities for prevention and treatment of non-communicable diseases; (2) text mining / natural language processing of electronic health records / social media big data for public health surveillance and; (3) mHealth – mobile survey/data collection and clinical decision support system.

Ola’s research has supported policy makers at local, national and international level in making health care decisions, including the World Health Organisation and UN International Labour Organisation internationally; the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) UK, Public Health England, and the UK National Screening Committee nationally; and Coventry City Council locally where he led a Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund project to measure the impact of establishing three new primary care schemes on hospital activity. Ola’s immediate research agenda focuses on harnessing the power of big data and innovative ensemble of machine learning algorithms for identifying the opportunities for prevention and treatment of non-communicable disease. His long-term goal is to translate these methodological advances in big data and machine learning into real- world systems that can be deployed and used to benefit precision Global Health.

Ola’s teaching ideology is centred on the following guiding principles. The course should be also balanced in term of theoretical aspect as well as practical applications. It is paramount that the students have good grasps of both theory and applications using different case studies. They should be able to understand the connection between different theories to their applications in real world settings. Ola is looking forward to applying these principles to Interaction: Environment and Genes module.

Assistant Professor Daniel Gallacher

Co Lead - Project Planning module

Dan’s undergraduate degree was in mathematics, which was followed by a MSc in medical statistics. He has worked with Warwick Evidence for the last 5 years as a medical statistician and a project leader, previously working in Warwick CTU. Warwick Evidence is one of NICE’s external assessment groups and play a major role in informing NICE’s decision making processes. Alongside this Dan has been completing a PhD which evaluated the utility of current and emerging methods of estimating treatment benefit in NICE technology appraisals.

Dan is a personal tutor, and co-leads the project planning module, in addition to supervising a range of student projects.

Dr Aparna Ratheesh

Module Co-Leader: Systems: Cell to Society

Aparna did her PhD in Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai where she studied the mechanisms involved in melanoma metastasis. She then worked as a postdoc for two years at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, Brisbane studying the mechanobiology of epithelial junctions. She then moved onto investigating cell migration in developing embryos at the Institute of Science and Technology, Austria where she was supported by the prestigious Marie Curie Fellowship. In October 2018, Aparna joined the Warwick Medical School and Centre for Mechanochemical Cell Biology as an Assistant Professor supported by the Wellcome-Warwick Quantitative Biomedicine Programme where she established her research group.

At Warwick Medical school, Aparna and her research team studies the mechanical and biochemical regulation of early embryonic immune migration using Drosophila macrophages as a model system.

Leah Brooks

Undergraduate Coordinator

Prior to her current role Leah worked in the hospitality industry for nearly ten years, in the last year Leah took on the role as a Duty Manager at the conference centres on campus. She has been in this role with WMS since January 2023.

In her current role, Leah is one of the first points of contact for our undergraduate students, providing information, advice, and administrative support on all aspects of our undergraduate courses working along side Georgina Barrett.