Amar Rangan
Professor Amar Rangan holds the Mary Kinross Trust and RCS Chair at HYMS and Department of Health Sciences, University of York, a full professorship with faculty of medical sciences and NDORMS, University of Oxford. He is a specialist shoulder and elbow surgeon at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He is fellowship director for the nationally accredited shoulder and elbow fellowship at South Tees Hospitals and is course director for the postgraduate MCh(Orth) programme in Teesside. Amar is a designated supervisor for HYMS integrated academic training and supervises pre-doctoral and doctoral studentships.
He has published widely in trauma and orthopaedics where his work has influenced clinical practice, national guidelines, and policy. Amar leads a programme of clinical and translational research, including NIHR funded multi-centre clinical trials.
Amar has held key national leadership roles: President of BESS, trustee of BOA, and surgeon member of the NJR Steering Committee. He is chair of MedConnectNorth and is a member of the NIHR i4i Challenge Awards Committee.
Twitter: @ProfRangan
Lucksy Kottam
Dr Lucksy Kottam is head of academic operations at ACeS as well as an applied health researcher and has experience with evaluation of surgical interventions and health services research since 2010. She has a background in stem cells translational medicine (PhD.) from University of Sheffield. Lucksy’s main focus will be on clinical effectiveness research, particularly large multi-centre surgical trials including health economic evaluations of interventions.
She has undertaken various trials of high-quality surgical care research of international excellence in trauma and orthopaedic surgery including RCTs of clinical effectiveness, qualitative, mixed methods research, health economic analysis that has direct patient benefit by guiding evidence-based clinical practice, healthcare commissioning and policy regionally, nationally, and internationally. She also has experience in leading systematic reviews, feasibility studies and various multicentre-clinical service evaluations and audits of national importance.
Lucksy is a co-applicant on several multi-centre national, peer-reviewed clinical trials, including NIHR HTA funded and several other minor grants. She is also a member of NIHR external peer reviewer community. Lucksy has also led the establishment and support to several patient advisory groups.
Twitter: @LKottam
Paul Baker
Professor Paul Baker is a consultant orthopaedic surgeon specialising in treating patients with degenerative hip and knee conditions that require replacement surgery.
Since December 2018, he has been the research and development director at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. He is also an executive member of TVRA and the Research Design Service for North-East and North Cumbria. He also sits on the MedConnect steering group and represents the trust at the clinical research network partnership group. Professor Baker is a member of the NICE guideline and quality standards team. He is the current RCS specialty lead for orthopaedics and sits on the NIHR HTA commissioning panel, the BOA research committee and he is also an RCS MSK RADAR group member.
Professor Baker has undertaken a significant amount of research into the outcomes of patients undergoing hip and knee replacement procedures. He is a NIHR grant holder leading a national studies that research how to help patients get back to work after hip and knee replacement surgery.
He has completed a number of postgraduate qualifications including a MSc degree (2007), a MD (2013), he was the NJR research fellow (2012) and visiting BOA ABC fellow (2018).
Twitter: @Profpaulbaker
Will Eardley
Mr Eardley trained in surgery throughout Northern England and completed his education with a year’s fellowship experience before being appointed as consultant surgeon to the South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2014. Mr Eardley consults on acute and chronic trauma management. Post traumatic deformity, fixation failure, nonunion and infection account for the bulk of his clinical work. As part of his limb reconstruction work Mr Eardley has considerable ring fixation expertise in addition to utilising all internal fixation trauma implants.
Having left the British Army in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel after 19 years of service, working in an operational capacity in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr Eardley has an acknowledged reputation in research, publishing numerous papers, letters and book chapters. His research interests are in trauma and infection management, nonunion, and injury in the older patient. He has completed a formal period of study at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, successfully defending his thesis to be awarded Doctor of Medicine from the University of Newcastle.
He is a research associate at University of York’s CTU, is chairman of AOUK Research and Professional Education and is Orthopaedic Trauma Society Research chair. He sits on the Trauma Audit Research Network National Committee and the BOA Trauma Committee and is responsible for the coordination of the BOA Standards for Trauma.
Twitter: @williameardley
Phil Holland
Philip graduated from the University of Liverpool in 2005. He completed his surgical training in Merseyside. This included training at the world famous Wrightington Hospital and completing a MSc with Distinction at Salford University. On completing his Certificate of Completion of Specialist Training in 2015, Philip had a year of advanced training in shoulder arthroscopy (keyhole surgery) and shoulder arthroplasty (joint replacement surgery) with internationally renowned surgeons at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust.
Philip was appointed as an NHS consultant at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust in 2016. In his practice at the busy shoulder unit he routinely treats military personnel, sports injuries and arthritic shoulder conditions.
Philip is actively involved in national and international studies on the treatment of shoulder conditions. He was awarded an NIHR grant to develop a novel shoulder implant and has worked with industry on innovative products to improve patient care. He has published extensively in orthopaedic journals and has presented his research internationally.
Philip has a committed interest in teaching and provides advanced training to shoulder surgeons from the UK and overseas as part of a fellowship accredited by the RCS.
Natalie Clark
Natalie is the clinical trials co-ordinator for ACeS and has previously worked in trauma and orthopaedic research. She has worked at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since October 2019. She is currently the trials co-ordinator for the South Tees sponsored studies, MAPPS and Trident II. 
Natalie has previous experience in co-ordinating the local lower limb complex arthroplasty, infection and tumour MDT as well as helping to develop an online patient education and support program for elective hip and knee replacements, carpal tunnel syndrome and virtual fracture clinic.
Natalie graduated from Teesside University, Middlesbrough in 2018 with a first class honours in BSc Psychology and a distinction in MSc Health Psychology and Clinical Skills in 2019.
Her MSc thesis examined the influence of positive statements and negative attitudes on a person’s intention to be an organ donor under the new opt-out organ donation legislation implemented in England May 2020, which has recently been accepted for publication to Progress in Transplantation journal.
Currently, she is undertaking a doctoral level qualification in health psychology with the British Psychological Society. Her focus for this training is on hypermobility spectrum disorders, including Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
Melissa Johnson
Melissa Johnson graduated from Coventry University with a BSc honours degrees and has
been employed as a shoulder and elbow advanced physiotherapy practitioner at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust since 2018. She currently works alongside orthopaedic consultants and within the physiotherapy service. Melissa completed her injection therapy certificate through the University of Central Lancashire in 2019 and is currently studying for an MSc in Advanced Clinical Practice at Teesside University.
Melissa has a special interest in shoulder rehabilitation particularly in patients who present with complex shoulder instability. Melissa enjoys teaching having recently presented a session on shoulder instability and hypermobility at the Northeast BESS Roadshow and teaching shoulder assessment to pre-registration MSc students at Teesside University.
Melissa’s research area of interest includes shoulder instability, hypermobility and pre-operative rehabilitation. Having previously performed a focus group exploring patient
experiences with hypermobility and shoulder instability which highlighted the difficulties
they face; she is keen to develop services and pathways for this patient group.
John Norman
John grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne and completed an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at the University of Liverpool before undertaking his MD at HYMS. He graduated in 2019 and undertook his foundation training in North Yorkshire. He is the first Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF) in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery to be appointed in the North Yorkshire/South Tees region, appointed in 2021.
He has taken part in a number of local, regional, national, and international research projects. He published his first paper in a PubMed indexed journal in his fourth year of medical school. This background in laboratory research and basic science married well with John’s curiosity to not only ask “why?” but to “find out why!” resulting in his pursuit of an opportunity to train in a programme combining academic and clinical training.
John strives to provide the best possible care for patients suffering from both acute and chronic musculoskeletal diseases and loves learning the art of the practical aspects of day-to-day clinical orthopaedic practice, both in clinic and the operating theatre.
John is currently involved in research projects investigating non-union of the humeral shaft and dislocations of the acromioclavicular joint. He is taking a lead in an exciting project developing a new nanotechnology-device, which aims to diagnose joint infections in a fraction of the current time and with relatively small samples of fluid. John hopes that this work can be used as the basis for him to undertake a Doctorate at the University of York in the near future.
Maya Jafari
Maya graduated from the University of New South Wales in Sydney in 2003 and then moved to the North East of England where she completed her basic surgical training.
She took a research post in orthopaedics and was awarded an MSc in Evidence Based Medicine (orthopaedics) from Teesside University. She started training in radiology in the Northern Deanery in 2009, completed training in 2014 and undertook her post-CCT musculoskeletal fellowship at Leeds Teaching Hospitals in 2015.
She returned to South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in 2016 after a short spell in Manchester Royal Infirmary, as a consultant musculoskeletal radiologist.
She has been the Royal College of Radiologists iRefer MSK Editor since 2020. She has also been the regional Fellowship of Royal College of Radiologists 2A musculoskeletal lead since 2020.
She has published several peer-reviewed articles and a book chapter.
Twitter: @JafariMaya
Nitin Mukerjee
Nitin Mukerji is a consultant neurosurgeon at The James Cook University Hospital, Middlesbrough and sub-specialises in cerebrovascular and skull-base.
He also serves as one of the clinical information officers for the trust and as editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Neurosurgery.
He is an honorary consultant neurosurgeon (visiting) County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust, Imperial College NHS Trust, London and Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Trust and an honorary fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute, Durham University.
Research interests currently include minimally invasive treatments for chronic subdural haematomas and aneurysms of the circle of Willis. He is currently the PI or two NIHR portfolio studies at JCUH. He has over 50 peer reviewed publications.
Dimitris Lagos
Dimitris Lagos is Professor of Immunology and Director of Research at Hull York Medical School at the University of York. He is also Head of Experimental Medicine and Biomedicine.
He oversees research strategy development and delivery in the Medical School.
His research focuses on the immune system. Immune cells exhibit remarkable sophistication when attacking infected or cancerous cells or when repairing damaged tissues. Inspired by the centrality of RNA, his group investigate how non-coding and regulatory RNAs, and post-transcriptional RNA modifications shape the function of immune cells in infection and cancer.
In parallel with mechanistic studies, he has a growing interest in pharmacological targeting of RNA. His translational studies focus on novel technologies to explore plasticity and wealth of the transcriptome in disease and RNA-centric spatially-resolved molecular pathology pipelines, applied in the context of inflammatory and infectious diseases, cancer, and chronic mental health conditions.
Twitter: @DimitrisLagos04
Joy Adamson
Joy is currently the Mary Kinross Trust and RCS in Surgical Trials and Health Sciences, based at York Trials Unit, University of York.
Joy is a social scientist by background, her qualifications have put her in the rare position of having in-depth training in both qualitative and quantitative methods that Joy has applied in a range of applied health research projects, now concentrating on surgical research.
Joy is currently working on five NIHR HTA funded surgical trials across orthopaedic hand surgery and is co-lead on the recently funded NIHR HSDR evaluation of HVLC Surgical Hubs. Joy is happy to discuss applications relating to surgical research from a methodological perspective.
Twitter: @joyadamson_ytu
Caroline Wroe
Caroline Wroe is clinical director of the NIHR Clinical Research Network for North East and North Cumbria and a Consultant Nephrologist at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
She is honorary professor of research delivery systems at Newcastle University and in her NIHR role she leads a regional team across 30 clinical specialties, primary care, public health and social care to co-ordinate and facilitate research study delivery across the North East of England.
Caroline is an experienced principle and chief investigator, having worked to deliver commercial, non-commercial and complex interventional trials with a particular interest on embedding research into routine clinical care pathways.
As a clinician her research interests include living kidney donation and public attitudes and action around organ donation.
Twitter: @carolinewroe1
Victoria Christie
After attaining an MPhil in Applied Physics, Victoria spent a number of years working in intellectual property in the North West, London and the North East. Primary responsibilities included drafting patent applications for the UK and abroad, and prosecuting patent applications before the UK and European Patent Offices.
Victoria then moved to RTC North Limited, where she spent around ten years working as an Intellectual Property Manager for NHS Innovations North, having responsibility for the management of patent applications belonging to NHS Trusts and SMEs in the region.
2016 saw her move to the AHSN NENC as an Intellectual Property and Contracts Manager, where her role focusses upon the provision of intellectual property and contracts assistance to Member Organisations.
Twitter: @AHSN_NENC
Bob Slight
Mr Bob Slight is a consultant thoracic surgeon at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and Honorary Senior Lecturer at Newcastle University.
As part of his research role, he works with the senior leadership group with the NIHR LCRN as speciality group lead for surgery. Bob supervises several PhD students in a diverse range of areas including surgical safety, health systems research, artificial intelligence, digital health, health inequity and behavioural change.
He is co-lead of the NIHR funded HEALTH (HarnEssing Artificial intelligence to Lead Transformative Healthcare) project which aims to reduce healthcare utilisation when air quality is poor. This a collaboration with the Northern Urban Observatory, Newcastle Hospitals, North Tyneside Council, North of England Care Support, Newcastle University, Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants and Kings College London.
Bob believes strongly in collaborative networks of multi-disciplinary researchers and is aiming to support this in surgery through the inaugural North of England Forum for Surgical Research.