Data Infrastructure & Science

I hope to establish common practices and technical solutions across Inflammation and Immunity to increase the efficiency of UK-wide study, as well as enhancing the tools and systems available to researchers in order to drive impactful science.

Image

Programme Theme(s): Data Infrastructure & Science

Chris Orton is Inflammation and Immunity’s Technical Lead based within Population Data Science at Swansea University Medical School.

Although vast, vibrant and brimming with potential, the UK’s health data landscape is a highly fragmented environment. Research groups operating within it often face complex and sensitive challenges around data security, availability, access and linkage.

Thankfully, Chris has an expert view of these matters. As Technical Lead he provides invaluable insights into practical, technical solutions that will allow us to navigate this landscape and connect with its key players – data custodians, Trusted Research Environments and other research groups. After countless experiences working with such groups on the regional, national and international level, Chris understands that these ambitions depend on extensive negotiation, collaboration and cooperation.

His guidance will help ensure that Inflammation and Immunity:

• Is soundly rooted within and progresses proportionately across the four UK nations;
• Is at the forefront of technical developments that increase the efficiency of UK-wide study;
• Generates UK-wide results;
• Delivers impactful outputs, observations and understanding of respiratory and wider inflammatory and immunity-based conditions to the public eye; and
• Influences care providers and government policy

Outside of the programme, Chris works within a world-leading research and data infrastructure team at Swansea University who support thousands of researchers worldwide. They are embedded in several national initiatives in improving data access, technical capability for research, and bridging the gap between policy-facing research and the tools needed to undertake such work. In particular, Chris manages several research initiatives involving the SAIL Databank and Secure eResearch Platform (SeRP).

Read Chris Orton’s professional profile

Relevant links

What are Trusted Research Environments?

Find out more about Population Data Science

Find out more about SAIL Databank

Find out more about SeRP

Definitions

Trusted Research Environments (TREs)

• Highly secure computing environments provide remote access to health data for approved researchers to use for research across various scientific domains, research which ultimately can save and improve lives. 

Image

Programme Theme(s): Describe, Predict, Data Infrastructure & Science

Dr Adriana Machado is an Inflammation and Immunity Research Fellow based at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an epidemiologist with expertise in dataset management and statistical analysis using Stata Software. 

Her research interests include sleep, rest-activity rhythm, inequalities and population-based studies. Working within a new field – inflammation-mediated conditions - presents Adriana with a new and interesting challenge. 

View Adriana’s ResearchGate profile 

Image

Programme Theme(s): Predict, Data Infrastructure & Science

Dr Constantinos Kallis is one of Inflammation and Immunity’s Research Fellows based in Imperial College London. 

Holding a PhD in statistics, Constantinos’ research interests lie in analysing routinely collected clinical data related to patients with respiratory disease. He has extensive, high-level expertise in data analysis and data curation, which he uses to support and facilitate the work of our Data and Infrastructure cross-cutting theme.  

Read Constantinos’ profile 

I hope to be able to provide insights into how and why sex inequalities in respiratory disease exist to ultimately improve patient care.

Image

Programme Theme(s): Describe, Data Infrastructure & Science

Dr Hannah Whittaker is an Inflammation and Immunity Research Fellow based at Imperial College London. She sits on our steering group as an Early Career Researchers (ECR) representative, and also the secondary supervisor to Zak Gassasse, one of our PhD students. 

Hannah’s research interests lie in the sex and gender differences in respiratory disease. She is currently investigating whether sex-related inequalities exist in people living with chronic respiratory diseases. To do this, she is looking at incidence, exacerbation and mortality rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), asthma and interstitial lung disease by sex, as well as other inequalities. This will form the basis of further work which will determine why these inequalities exist and how we can reduce this gap. 

Hannah’s expertise lies in working with different types of electronic healthcare data and manipulating large quantities of data. For example, working with data on over 64 million people. 

She has received a BSc (Hons) from Edinburgh University in Biomedical Sciences (Pharmacology), a MSc in Epidemiology from UCL and a PhD in Epidemiology from Imperial College London. Her PhD was on lung function decline in people with COPD. 

Read Hannah’s professional profile