People

Anne Lingford Hughes

Professor of Addiction Biology and a clinically active academic psychiatrist whose research aims to improve clinical outcomes by characterising the neuropharmacology of addiction. Anne uses a range of techniques including neuroimaging, pharmacological and behavioural challenges and clinical trials. Her commitment to clinical research training is demonstrated by her membership of the MRC Clinical Training Fellowship Panel (2009-2014), developing 7 ACF posts at Imperial College (two in addiction) in the last 3 years, mentoring, as research tutor for local specialty psychiatry trainees and as Chair of Academic Faculty of Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCPsych) to support trainees’ research. She has been instrumental in training clinicians about the pharmacology of addiction, such as with British Association for Psychopharmacology. 

She is Deputy Director of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology (CfN) at Imperial College, a world-leading centre investigating the neurobiology of substance use and addiction (including nicotine, alcohol, opiate, cocaine) and pathological gambling. The multidisciplinary team use neuroimaging (MR, PET) plus pharmacological and behavioural challenges with subjective and objective measures to assess impacts of drugs in healthy volunteers and addicts. CfN’s academic clinicians work in the substantial addiction services at Central North West London NHS Foundation Trust and partnership 3rd sector organisations. The CfN currently holds several relevant MRC grants as well as leading the ICCAM MRC addiction cluster research programme. 

Imperial College London is consistently rated among the world's best universities with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. In Research Evaluation Framework (REF) 2014, it was ranked 10th in Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience with its research deemed to have international excellence for an outstanding 92% of projects. In addition, 84% of impact case studies were rated “world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour (4*)”. Within the College, the Department of Medicine is one of the largest teaching and research organisations in the UK which will provide an ideal environment for the MARC fellows to develop their clinical academic careers.

Colin Drummond

Professor of Addiction Psychiatry, Head of the Alcohol Research Group, and Consultant Psychiatrist at the National Addiction Centre, IOPPN and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM). Professor Drummond is principal investigator on several research grants from the Dept of Health, NIHR, MRC, the European Commission and WHO. He is chairman of the Medical Council on Alcohol since 2011, and Chair of the Addictions Faculty of the RCPsych from 2014. He is a member of the WHO Expert Committee on Drug Dependence and Alcohol Problems, and Chair of the NICE guideline development group on management of alcohol dependence and NICE expert group on alcohol treatment quality standards. 

The IOPPN, King's College London is a postgraduate medical school associated with SLAM with an outstanding international reputation in the field of research. In the REF 2014, IOPPN ranked 2nd in the UK for research power and achieved a 100% 4* ranking for research environment. Overall 88% of the submission was rated ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (4*/3*) and returned 257 staff. The Addictions Department received high rankings in terms of research quality and impact. King's College London as a whole rose to 6th in the UK for ‘power’ and 7th for quality, a significant improvement from RAE 2008. The recent US News Global Best Universities list, based on reputation and research in the field, named King's College London as 2nd in the world for psychiatry and psychology, 2nd only to Harvard. 

The IOPPN hosts the MRC Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, the NIHR specialist Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) for Mental Health and an NIHR BRC in Dementia. IOPPN is a leading centre within the CRC UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies (a Public Health Centre of Excellence) and has recently been awarded a large NIHR Collaborations for Leadership in Applied Health Research & Care (CLAHRC) which has a large addictions theme. The Addictions Clinical Academic Group within King's Health Partners forms one of the core areas of the Academic Health Science Centre that brings together university partners King's College London with the NHS from SLAM, King's College Hospital and Guy's and St Thomas's. The emphasis of our research is on 'what works' in the prevention and treatment of substance misuse.

Matthew Hickman

Professor in Public Health and Epidemiology and Honorary Public Health Consultant at NHS Bristol and Public Health England. Professor Hickman is the director of NIHR Health Protection Research Unit on Evaluation of Interventions, and a member and co-investigator of UK CRC Public Health Centre of Excellence (DECIPHer: Centre for the Development and Evaluation of Complex Interventions for Public Health Improvement) and NIHR School of Public Health Research. His research programme focuses on epidemiology and public health consequences of drug misuse – including adolescent substance use, and epidemiology and prevention of Hepatitis C and drug-related mortality with grants from MRC, NIHR, NIH and Wellcome. He is Deputy Regional Editor of Addiction and was a member of the recent Academy Medical Sciences Working Group on Brain Science. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction and the Cochrane collaboration on Drugs and Alcohol.

The University of Bristol is ranked among the top five institutions in the UK for its research in REF 2014, in relation to research excellence and power. The School of Social and Community Medicine (SSCM) is a leading centre for research and teaching in population health sciences. The 2014 REF rated 50% per cent of our research as 4* and 86% as 4* or 3* (world leading or internationally excellent), with SSCM ranked 3rd in terms of research power. 100% of our research impact case studies were rated as world-leading, as was 100% of our research environment. SSCM holds a silver Athena Swann award and hosts a number of major research centres and Units which will provide opportunities for research and training to MARC (see Appendix 1). These include the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC); the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, MRC Methodology Hub (Collaboration and innovation in Difficult and complex randomised Controlled Trials). SSCM hosts an NIHR CLAHRC; two NIHR Schools of Public Health Research and Primary Care Research and an NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Evaluation. SSCM has strong links with local secondary and community services through Bristol Health Partners.