Membership of the committee
Core membership
Chair: The Chair is an independent academic health scientist appointed, through an open recruitment process, by Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox, Chief Investigator for QResearch. The initial term is for 2 years which can be renewed annually for a further 3 years.
Deputy Chair: The Deputy Chair is an independent academic health scientist appointed, through an open recruitment process, by Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox. The initial term is for 2 years which can be renewed annually for a further 3 years
Members: There will be a minimum of 8 members of the committee including the Chair, Deputy Chair, Chair of the QResearch Advisory Board and Professor Hippisley-Cox (Chief Investigator and Founder of QResearch). New members of the committee will appointed by the Chair of the Science Committee and Chief Investigator for QResearch following an advertised open recruitment process to increase diversity. The initial term will be two years. Members are invited to apply from relevant academic disciplines including, for example, clinicians, statistics, epidemiology, health economics and patient and lay experience from within and external to the university. A minimum number of members for the meeting to be quorate is 4 members.
Secretariat: The secretariat is provided by Ms Charlotte Edwards Roscamp
Observers: Observers are welcome to join specific meetings by prior arrangement which can be organised by contacting [email protected].
Dr Paula Dhiman is the Chair of the QResearch Scientific Committee and is a Senior Research Fellow in Medical Statistics at the Centre for Statistics in Medicine, University of Oxford. She works to improve the design, quality, and integrity of future medical research by advancing statistical methodology research. Her research themes are statistical methodology, applied statistics and meta-research, linked by a focus on prediction modelling for medical research. Paula has extensive experience in working with large routinely collected databases, including primary and secondary care databases.
Joined November 2020, third term, chair from August 2021
Dr Kate Best
Kate Best is a senior research fellow based in the Academic Unit of Ageing and Stroke Research at the University of Leeds. Kate is a medical statistician interested in applying statistics to routinely collected health data in order to improve the health and social wellbeing of the population. She has experience developing and validating prognostic models using large linked primary, secondary and social care data. Previously, Kate was based at Newcastle University where she developed predictive models to estimate prevalence and survival of rare congenital conditions using linked population-based register data.
Joined March 2023, third term
Dr Jennifer Jardine is an obstetrician and an NIHR Clinical Lecturer at the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals. She has a MSc in Medical Statistics and a PhD in Public Health and Policy, and experience in conducting studies using electronic health data to improve clinical understanding and drive policy change.
Joined September 2026
Dr Chloé Pasin
Dr Chloé Pasin is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the SHARE Collaborative (Queen Mary University of London), working at the intersection of data science and health equity. She holds a PhD in Biostatistics from the University of Bordeaux and brings experience in quantitative methods applied to population health and infectious diseases, including HIV, SARS-CoV-2, and Ebola.
Her recent work spans gender inequities in HIV, qualitative methods, and community co-production. She has held postdoctoral positions at the University of Zurich, the Collegium Helveticum, and Columbia University.
Joined September 2026, first term
Dipesh is a London-based GP and NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR) career development fellow at the Queen Mary University of London. He researches how to improve the lives of people with a cancer diagnosis (living with and beyond cancer, cancer survivorship) and health inequalities.
He completed his undergraduate medical training at Brighton & Sussex Medical School, and his intercalated Physiology BSc at King’s College London. He completed his postgraduate medical training in East Anglia as a foundation doctor before completing academic GP training in North London and Queen Mary University of London. Since then he secured the competitive NIHR In-Practice Fellowship and NIHR SPCR Primary Care Clinicians Career Progression Fellowship to evaluate cancer care conversations ‘cancer care reviews’ and the link between health inequalities and cancer recurrence. He completed his Master’s in Clinical Health Research at University of Birmingham.
Joined September 2026, first term
Dr Doriane Mignon is a research fellow at the University of Manchester based in Health Organisation, Policy, and Economics (HOPE) group at the Centre for Primary Care and Health Services Research. She is a health economist specialising in the analysis of large administrative and survey datasets using econometrics. Her topics of interest are related to healthcare access, mental health, social inequalities and the links between work and health.
She joined the University of Manchester in September 2023 after a postdoctoral position at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Previously, she completed her PhD in economics at the University Paris-Dauphine, PSL in Paris, France.
Joined September 2026, first term
Gianluca Fabiano is a Senior Researcher in Health Economics at the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS), University of Oxford. His work centres on the use of real-world data to conduct economic evaluations of healthcare interventions, with a particular focus on orthopaedic and musculoskeletal conditions.
He has extensive experience working with large, routinely collected primary and secondary care databases. His research interests also include the use of data harmonised to common data models (e.g., OMOP) to enable federated network analyses in the UK and internationally. He began his career in Italy with training in economics, before moving to the United Kingdom, where he obtained an MRes and a PhD in Health Economics. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Joined September 2026, first term
Amy Wizard-Ponter
Always considered quirky by default, Amy WP is somewhat of a conundrum to the medical profession! She has a complex presentation of mental and physical health conditions and is also a very late diagnosed autistic individual.
She is committed to co-production, lived experience advisory work and works with a wide range of organisations – the NHS, charities, universities and many more organisations besides. She is part of many groups whether they be charity committees, VCSE working groups, focus groups, steering groups, clinical research groups and others across a broad spectrum of key focus areas for healthcare.
The work is wide ranging – anything from analysis, data review, training and shaping outputs via QI, through to writing articles and poetry, creating campaigns and assisting with research in a multitude of ways too – in public health, clinical research facilities, university projects and more, in a range of topic areas of importance.
She is thoroughly driven to help others in any way possible, therefore tries to harness the experience of multiple diagnoses and advocate for others. Yet also use both lived and learned experience to support organisations with whatever they may need. Determined to drive change and improvements in healthcare, data, research and beyond.
Joined September 2026, first term
Kate Hawley
Kate Hawley lives in Newcastle with her two young children and her American husband, Scott. She was inspired to get involved in public and patient involvement when her best friend passed away from a rare form of mouth cancer in her early thirties, leaving two preschool-aged children behind. As part of this cancer journey, Kate's friend lost the use of her voice, and so the ability for Kate to amplify the patient 'voice' is even more poignant. She is now quite experienced in patient and public advocacy, sitting on numerous NIHR panels to assess PPIE input into funding applications and being part of Patient Advisory Groups in Cancer Research UK, the British Heart Foundation, NICE, NHS England and Great Ormond Street Hospital. She has recently been elected as a Governor to the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust. Outside of her health advocacy, she is a senior manager for the Forestry Commission and spends her time leading on government grants for woodland creation and management in Northumberland and Yorkshire.
Joined September 2026, first term
Sienna-Mae Yates
Sienna-Mae Yates is a Patient and Public Involvement contributor with several years of experience supporting health research, governance, and policy development. Since 2020, she has worked with national research funders, universities, and NHS organisations to help embed meaningful patient and public involvement across the research cycle. She has contributed to advisory groups, steering boards, and review panels, assessing research proposals and funding applications across areas including cancer, mental health, genomics, and digital health.
Sienna brings lived experience as a patient and carer, including experience of long term mental health conditions and neurodivergence. This informs her commitment to ensuring that research is inclusive, ethically grounded, and reflective of the diverse communities it seeks to serve. She has a particular interest in the responsible use of anonymised patient records and large scale health data and is committed to promoting transparency, proportionality, and public trust in research governance. She hopes to bring a thoughtful and balanced public perspective to the committee’s discussions and decision making.
Joined September 2026, first term
Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox (Chief Investigator for QResearch)
Julia Hippisley-Cox is the Chief Investigator for QResearch and Professor in Clinical Epidemiology and Predictive Medicine at Queen Mary University of London. She is an Honorary Consultant Barts Health Care Trust and Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and a GP. Her key research interests are in the development and validation of algorithms for predicting risk of disease and evaluating safety of commonly prescribed medications.
Competing Interests: JHC was founder and shareholder of ClinRisk Ltd. In 2023, 100% of the share capital of ClinRisk Ltd was donated to Endeavour Health Care Charitable Trust and the company renamed to Endeavour Predict Community Interest Company. JHC is a consultant for Endeavour Predict CIC and her husband is a non-executive director.
Joined Sept 2019