Six high profile Adjunct and Visiting Professors join IGHI.

Forming effective collaborations is important to the Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI). By working in partnership with established academics, policy makers and business leaders, we can make better-informed decisions and obtain a broader understanding of the issues facing global health today.

We are pleased to announce our new Adjunct and Visiting Professors who have recently been appointed within the institute: 

Dame Ruth Carnall

Former Chief Executive, NHS London and Strategic Advisor on Health to the Mayor of London

Dame Ruth has over 30 years of experience in healthcare with 20 as a chief executive in the NHS covering acute hospitals, mental health and community services and health authorities.

She has worked in senior positions at a local, regional and national level covering operational, strategic and policy roles. Over the last 7 years, Ruth has been responsible for the NHS in London as Chief Executive of NHS London. In this capacity, she has overseen an extensive programme of performance improvement and strategic change.

Prior to joining NHS London, Ruth worked as an independent consultant with public and private sector clients including Department of Health, Monitor, Health Authorities, NHS Trusts and Glaxo as well as the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, the Cabinet Office, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.

In 2011, Ruth was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for her achievements in healthcare.

Professor Glenn Gibson

Head of Food Microbial Sciences Unit, University of Reading

Professor Gibson has demonstrated significant impact within his profession and work practice as a leader in the field of food microbial sciences. He was responsible for the initiation of the prebiotic concept for gut flora management through diet. The article which originally coined this term was published in 1995 and is currently the most-cited paper in the Agricultural Sciences field of the ISI Essential Science Indicators (>2000 citations).

He is the Founder and a member of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics (ISAPP).  ISAPP provides a forum for researchers and food and biopharma industry professionals to exchange research findings leading to further opportunities for collaboration and exploitation of the research.

He is a Board Member of Clasado Advisory Board, Ganeden, Kellogg’s, Allergy Research Foundation, General Mills and Fugeia. 

He has taken part in many high profile public engagement activities including research being covered by television programmes, international news broadcasters and publications.

Glenn will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the Centre for Digestive and Gut Health under the remit of the Institute of Global Health Innovation and Imperial College. The new Centre led by Professors Jeremy Nicholson and Mark Thursz will welcome contributions from Professor Gibson in understanding the systemic role of the gut in major diseases and health.

Professor Sian Griffiths OBE JP

Board Member, Public Health England,

Director, Centre for Global Health, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Professor Griffiths has demonstrated significant impact within her profession and work practice as a leader in the field of public health.

Sian joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong as Professor of Public Health and Director of the School of Public Health in 2005. She becomes the Chairman of the Department of Community and Family Medicine in 2006. She qualified as a doctor and held a variety of service posts with academic links at international, national, regional and local level within the UK.

She was Chair of the Association for Public Health, Co-founded the UKPHA and was President of the UK Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges of Physicians from 2001-4 having held a wide number of professional positions.

She co-chaired the Hong Kong Government’s expert committee into the SARS epidemic in 2003 as well as the monitoring committee. Since coming to Hong Kong, she has worked with HKSAR Government, public health professional organisations and colleagues across the healthcare and academic systems. Her interests are in developing health policy through public health approaches and in developing public health capacity to promote the public’s health.

She is a member of the UK RAE panel for epidemiology and public health, and is a member of the National Health Authority Board of Qatar. She is an Honorary Professor at Peking University, the School of Public Health, also a Technical Advisor to Public Health research in Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

She remains honorary senior clinical lecturer in the Department of Public Health and

Primary Care of Oxford University with whom the School of Public Health, The Chinese University of Hong Kong maintain links. She plays an active role in public health education and policy development in Hong Kong, including advising the HKSAR Department of Health.

In 2000, she received the OBE for services to public health and was made JP by the HKSAR Government in 2010 for her contribution to health in Hong Kong.

Professor Griffiths was also a key member of the Non-Communicable Disease working group at IGHI’s Global Health Policy Summit in 2012. The group produced a report which identified global innovations with the potential to address these challenges and identified lessons for policymakers.

Sir David Nicholson KCB CBE

Former Chief Executive, NHS England

Sir David was appointed Chief Executive of NHS England, formerly known as the NHS Commissioning Board, in October 2011. Up until April 2013, when NHS England took on its full powers, Sir David was also Chief Executive of the National Health Service (NHS) in England, a role he had held since September 2006. Sir David’s career in the NHS spans over 30 years. He started in the service as a management trainee, having graduated from the University of the West of England. He has held senior leadership positions in acute and mental health services, and at four regional health authorities. He was awarded the CBE in 2004 and was knighted in 2010, both for his services to the NHS.

IGHI recently co-hosted the World Innovation for Health (WISH) meeting held in Doha in December 2013. Over 1000 of the world’s most influential health leaders drawn from different sectors were invited, with an audience of ministers, policymakers, chief executives and leading academics from around the world. Sir David was a panel member of the Big Data working group that discussed innovative solutions to the challenges in this new and emerging area.

Professor Jeffrey Shaw

Honorary Professor at Central Academy of Fine Art, Beijing, 

Dean of the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong

Professor Shaw has demonstrated significant impact within his profession and work practice as a leader in the field of digital media technologies.

He has been a leading figure in new media art since its emergence from the performance, expanded cinema and installation paradigms of the 1960s to its present day technology-informed and virtualised forms. In a prolific career of widely exhibited and critically acclaimed work, he has pioneered the creative use of digital media technologies in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, immersive visualisation environments, navigable cinematic systems and interactive narrative.

Professor Shaw was co-founder of the Eventstructure Research Group in Amsterdam (1969-1979), and founding director of the ZKM Institute for Visual Media Karlsruhe (1991-2002). At the ZKM he conceived and ran a seminal artistic research program that included the ArtIntAct series of digital publications, the MultiMediale series of international media art exhibitions, over one hundred artist-in-residence projects, and the invention of new creative platforms such as the EVE Extended Virtual Environment (1993) PLACE (1995) and the Panoramic Navigator (1997). In 1995 Shaw was appointed Professor of Media Art at the State University of Design, Media and Arts (HfG), Karlsruhe, Germany.

In 2003, Professor Shaw was awarded the prestigious Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship and returned to Australia to co-found and direct the UNSW iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research in Sydney from 2003-2009. At iCinema he led a theoretical, aesthetic and technological research program in immersive interactive post-narrative systems, which produced pioneering artistic and research works such as Place-Hampi and T_Visionarium, the latter shown at the Biennale of Seville in 2008.

In 2009 he joined City University in Hong Kong as Chair Professor of Media Art and Dean of the School of Creative Media (SCM).

He was instrumental in showcasing the I-Dome (a 3-D immersive platform for the visualisation of data) at WISH to hundreds of delegates. 

Dr Paul Thompson

Rector, Royal College of Art

Dr Thompson has demonstrated significant impact within his profession and work practice as a leader in the field of design and healthcare.

Paul was previously Director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York, and Director of the Design Museum in London. He is a Trustee of the Victoria and Albert Museum and is on the Ashmolean Museum Board of Visitors. He is also a member of the Programme Advisory Committee of the Wellcome Collection, Wellcome Trust.

The Royal College of Art (RCA) has a long standing history with Imperial College. Two of its twenty-four Masters programmes are run jointly with Imperial: Innovation Design Engineering (now in its 26^th year) and Global Innovation Design, The RCA partners with Imperial on a number of research projects, including the newly established HELIX Centre for Design in Healthcare which focuses on transforming healthcare using design, making the UK a global business hub for low cost and high impact innovation. Dr Thompson is co-Director of the £2M HEFCE funded Centre.

Of relevance to the work of Imperial College in Health is the RCA’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design. The Centre has a long history of working in the field of Age & Ability; Healthcare; and the Workplace of the Future. Its groundbreaking design approaches in the fields of patient safety, designing out medical error, and inclusive design have been recognised internationally. Dr Thompson sits on the management and advisory boards of the Helen Hamlyn Centre.

Paul was also a panel member of the WISH Summit’s Innovation Showcase Plenary Session which discussed the role of design in healthcare.

Our new Adjuncts and Visiting Professors will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to IGHI and Imperial. As Adjunct Professors, they will contribute to the Institute’s educational programmes including the MSc in Health Policy and give a number of key seminars on policy implementation and change. They will represent the Institute and Imperial at high profile events and international conferences.

We are very much looking forward to working with them.