Trialists
First presentations of major trials results
Mayu Balachandran
Dr Balachandran obtained his medical degree from Monash University in 2020 and is now an intensive care registrar at Monash Medical Centre and The Victorian Heart Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. He is currently completing a Master of Medical Statistics at the University of Oxford.
Mayu started ALBICS-AKI trial, as his honours project in 2019 under the supervision of Prof Shehabi. His research interests include haemodynamic support after cardiac surgery and modern statistical models.
Outside the clinical environment Mayu is passionate about education, striving to impart knowledge and skills through evidence. In his spare time, Mayu is an avid landscape photographer.
Yahya Shehabi
Dr Shehabi is a Professor of Intensive Care Medicine and Anaesthesia at Monash University and University of New South Wales. Dr Shehabi is a senior clinical academic and an experienced clinical trialist with extensive track record in leading multinational large scale RCTs.
He is the lead architect of the Sedation Practice in Intensive Care Evaluation (SPICE) research programme, culminated with SPICE III and the ongoing SPICE IV trials. Through his research and publications, Professor Shehabi is an acknowledged international authority on sedation and delirium management. His research interests include biomarker of kidney injury and nephroprotection after cardiac surgery.
Twitter: @yahya_shehabi
Shane English
Shane English is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa, Department of Medicine (Critical Care) and an Intensivist in the Department of Critical Care at the Ottawa Hospital and the Medical Director of the Intensive Care Unit – Civic Campus. He completed residencies in General Internal Medicine and Adult Critical Care. He holds a Master's degree in Clinical Epidemiology. Dr. English has a particular clinical and research interest in NeuroCritical Care, having completed an additional fellowship at Cambridge in the UK. He is a Senior Scientist at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. He is a previous recipient of a National New Investigator Award from the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Dr English's research program is in aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage. He is the international lead of the SAHaRA RCT, a multi-centre international trial examining the effect of different red blood cell transfusion strategies on neurologic functional outcome, in collaboration with the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group.
Twitter: @shane_w_english
Yaseen Arabi
Dr. Arabi is recognized leader in critical care research and in the area of randomized controlled trial sepsis, mechanical ventilation, Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERs CoV) research. He has led multiple randomized controlled trials that were published in the leading medical journals. He has conducted the PREVENT trial (“Prophylaxis of Thromboembolism in Critically Ill Patients Using Combined Intermittent Pneumatic Compression and Pharmacologic Prophylaxis versus Pharmacologic Prophylaxis Alone: A Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial”), MIRACLE trial (“MERS-CoV Infection Treated with a Combination of Lopinavir/Ritonavir and Interferon Beta 1B: A Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind Randomized”) PERMIT trial (The Impact of Permissive Underfeeding versus Target Enteral Feeding on Mortality and Morbidity in Adult Critically Ill Patients: a Multicenter Randomized Controlled Trial”), all published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NJEM). He is the PI of the SCREEN trial (The Stepped-wedge Cluster Randomized Trial of Electronic Early Notification of Sepsis in Hospitalized Ward Patients). He collaborated with the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society (ANZICS), and the Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG) on multiple major controlled trials.
He has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers and been recognised in multiple awards. He is currently the chair of the Saudi Critical Care Trials Group (SCCTG).
Twitter: @YaseenarabiYa
Jacob Steinmetz
Jacob Steinmetz, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor in prehospital emergency medicine and a consultant in anaesthesiology in Copenhagen, Denmark. He is currently working as a clinical anaesthetist, prehospital emergency physician and part time researcher. He has published more than 100 papers mainly within trauma, prehospital emergency medicine, and postoperative cognitive dysfunction. He is chief investigator, and sponsor of the TRAUMOX2 trial.
Twitter: @jacob_steinmetz
Israel Maia
Dr. Israel Silva Maia is a pulmonologist, intensivist, clinical researcher at the HCor Research Institute in São Paulo, Brazil. He holds a Master's degree in Clinical Trials from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Ph.D. in Sciences from the Anesthesiology, Surgical Sciences, and Perioperative Medicine program at the University of São Paulo. Currently, Israel serves as a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Intensive Care at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Florianópolis, Brazil and he is the Scientific Director of the Brazilian Research Network in Intensive Care (BricNet).
Israel's primary academic interests lie in large-scale pragmatic clinical trials and adaptive methodologies. Among his most notable research endeavors are trials focused on acute respiratory failure. These include the REVOLUTION trial, a multi-arm, multi-stage randomized clinical trial investigating repurposed drugs for COVID-19 treatment, published in Lancet Regional Health. Additionally, the STAMINA trial explores driving pressure-limiting strategies for patients with ARDS, and the RENOVATE trial, which compares high-flow nasal oxygen (HFNO) to non-invasive ventilation (NIV) across a broad spectrum of acute respiratory failure causes, is yet to be published.
Twitter: @israelmaia16
Manu Shankar-Hari
Prof Manu Shankar-Hari is Chair of Translational Critical Care Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Manu offers an unusual combination of translational research skills, allied to formal research training in basic science (PhD in Immunology), and in health services research (MSc in Epidemiology). Manu’s core hypothesis is that modifiable biological networks generate clinical phenotypes of critical illness, and such networks could be determined by integration of clinical and immunobiology data.
Manu’s research group’s two focussed research themes of immunobiology and epidemiology converge on core aims to (i) enable precision immunomodulation in critically ill adults and (ii) generate new molecular reclassification of critical illness into measurable, and treatable immunological abnormalities that are syndrome agnostic (i.e., treatable traits).
For further details please see Manu’s website and the TRAITS Programme website.
Paul Dark
Paul is Professor of Critical Care, NIHR Senior Investigator and Vice Dean for Health and Care Partnerships in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at The University of Manchester, UK.
He was appointed to his current clinical academic post at The University of Manchester in 2003, developing clinical services and academic practice in Critical Care Medicine at the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust (Salford Care Organisation). He developed and provides leadership for a programme of work, funded mainly by the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR), investigating the clinical and cost effectiveness of emerging molecular diagnostic technologies in the setting of sterile tissue injury and severe infections (sepsis) within both high and low resource healthcare settings internationally. Funded by NIHR Manchester BRC, NIHR Manchester HealthTech Research Centre in Emergency and Acute Care and Innovate UK in partnership with industry, he also co-leads an ongoing programme of work developing novel technologies aimed at rapid point-of-care infection/sepsis theragnosis with the aim of optimising patient exposure to antimicrobial drugs.
Paul was NIHR Clinical Research Network's National Deputy Medical Director from 2022 to 2024.. He provided strategic leadership for the development, delivery and accessibility of a large portfolio of national clinical research in NHS acute hospital settings and he represents NIHR internationally. As a former NIHR National Specialty Lead for Critical Care, he served on NIHR's Urgent Public Health Research Advisory Group, providing expert advice on research priority for the Department of Health and Social Care and UK's Chief Medical Officers during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, he is Research Professor at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, providing strategic interdisciplinary leadership in global health and social justice.
Twitter: @DarkNatter
Mark Dennis
Associate Prof Mark Dennis is a cardiologist and mechanical circulatory support lead for cardiology, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. A/Prof Dennis is chief investigator on >$9 million of funding for research into cardiac arrest and acute cardiac failure. He is a National Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow for his work into appropriate patient selection, prognostication and access to acute heart failure and cardiac arrest therapies.
Brian Burns
Brian Burns is an emergency physician at Northern Beaches Hospital, Sydney and a prehospital and retrieval medicine specialist with Aeromedical Operations, NSW Ambulance. He works as a trauma consultant at Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney, and a Clinical Professor at Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney, as well as a Clinical Professor in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney. He is an active researcher in the areas of trauma and resuscitation.
Twitter: @HawkmoonHEMS
Editorialists & Panelists
Sarah Sasson
Sarah Sasson is a Clinical Immunologist, Immunopathologist, and Group Leader at The Kirby Institute of Infection and Immunity at The University of New South Wales where she leads wet-laboratory research. She has a growing research program in understanding the immunopathogenesis of sepsis/SIRS in the hope of identifying novel therapeutic targets. Sarah has led translational research projects in T-cell biology, Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor toxicities and COVID-19 vaccination in people who are immunocompromised. Sarah is currently funded by the Australian Medical Research Future Fund, a UNSW Scientia Fellowship, The Australian Intensive Care Foundation, and a USA National Institute of Health R21 Grant.
Twitter: @sarah_sasson
Lisa Higgins
Lisa Higgins leads the Health Economics Program and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre, Monash University. She is co-Chair of the Australasian Clinical Trials Alliance (ACTA) Health Economics Alongside Trials (HEAT) Group, an honorary Senior Research Fellow at the George Institute for Global Health, a member of the Australian Health Economics Society, Health Services Research Association of Australian and New Zealand, and ANZICS CTG. Lisa has been conducting clinical trials and health economics research in critical care for more than 15 years. Her research focuses on clinical trial methodology, long-term outcomes, and conducting economic evaluations alongside clinical trials in critical care. She has published papers in the area of cost-effectiveness analyses for Australian ICUs and is a leader in her field in this area. She has more than 110 publications with over 11,000 citations and has multiple clinical trial publications in high impact journals including the NEJM and JAMA. Lisa has served as a member of the management committees of 17 large-scale international randomised controlled NHMRC/MRFF trials.
Twitter: @iculisah
Paul Young
Paul Young’s primary research interest is in the design and conduct of large-scale multicentre randomised clinical trials in the field of Intensive Care Medicine. An active member of the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials Group (ANZICS CTG), Paul is a leading member of the international intensive care research community.
Alongside his role at the MRINZ, Paul is the Medical Director of the Wakefield Hospital ICU and co-clinical leader of the Intensive Care Research Unit at Wellington Hospital. Paul is Clinical Associate Professor, Department of Critical Care, at the University of Melbourne, an Adjunct Professor at the Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Research Centre, Monash University, and the Associate Editor for Critical Care and Resuscitation, the highest impact journal in the field of Intensive Care Medicine outside the US and Europe.
Involved in research collaborations with colleagues worldwide, Paul has published over 250 peer-reviewed journal articles, including numerous high impact publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Twitter: @DogICUma
Marion Campbell
Marion Campbell is Vice-Principal (Research) for the University of Aberdeen and Professor of Health Services Research in the Health Services Research Unit (HSRU). Marion is a medical statistician and clinical trialist. Her main research interests are in the design, conduct and analysis of clinical trials, especially complex trial design and the design and conduct of surgical and device trials. She has published widely on clinical trials methodology, including on cluster randomised trials, design of trials of non-pharmacological interventions, pragmatic trials and trials reporting. She has served on many national and international funding agencies and committees and is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Faculty of Public Health and the International Society for Clinical Trials.
Marion graduated with an honours degree in Statistics from the University of Aberdeen and subsequently gained an MSc in Statistics and PhD in Public Health. Following early career appointments within the National Health Service in the fields of Operational Research and Statistics of Medical Audit, she joined the Health Services Research Unit in 1993. She became Director of the Unit in 2007 - a position she held until the end of 2015, when she became Dean of Research for Life Sciences and Medicine. She took up the role of Vice-Principal (Research) in October 2017. HSRU remains her academic base.
Twitter: @MarionKCampbell
Victoria Cornelius
Victoria Cornelius is a Professor in Medical Statistics and Trial Methodology and Director of Imperial Clinical Trials Unit. Her work in trials includes evaluating drug and complex interventions developing approaches that promote statistical efficiency in both Bayesian and frequentist frameworks. Her statistical methods research is in the use of time-to-event signal detection methods to identify adverse drug reactions, and co-leads the NIHR MRC TMRP specialist research group to improve the analysis of harm outcomes in randomised controlled trials.
Twitter: @VR_Cornelius
Kathy Rowan
Professor Kathy Rowan is the Director of the NIHR Health and Social Care Delivery Research Programme, former Director of the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre (ICNARC), Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Adjunct Professor (Research) at Monash University, Australia.
In 1994, following her PhD from the University of Oxford, Professor Rowan founded ICNARC, an independent, not-for-profit, scientific organisation to facilitate improvements in the structure, process, outcomes and experiences of critical care - for patients and for those who care for them. ICNARC manages a broad programme of clinical audit and clinical/health services research, nationally and internationally.
Professor Rowan was awarded the Humphry Davy Medal by the UK Royal College of Anaesthetists (2004), completed a Harkness Fellowship (2005), received the President’s Prize with honorary life membership of the UK Intensive Care Society (2019) and Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (Queen’s Birthday Honours’ List 2021) for services to research and intensive care.
Twitter: @KathyRowan101
Danny McAuley
Danny McAuley is a Consultant and Professor in Intensive Care Medicine at the Regional Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital and Queen’s University of Belfast. He undertook his training in Belfast, Birmingham, London and San Francisco. He is Programme Director for the MRC/NIHR Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation (EME) programme and Co-Director of Research for the UK Intensive Care Society. He has several research interests including Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome and clinical trials. He is involved in multiple clinical trials, including being an executive team member of the PANTHER trial, a Bayesian adaptive platform randomized clinical trial studying novel interventions to improve outcomes for patients with acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure
Twitter: @dfmcauley
Michael Bailey
Michael Bailey is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine and the Head Statistician at the ANZ Intensive Care Research Centre (ANZIC-RC) at Monash University. With 28 years of experience as a biostatistician at Monash University, including 17 years with the ANZIC-RC, Prof. Bailey is recognized as the most heavily published intensive care statistician globally and one of the top 10 most published intensive care authors worldwide.
Prof. Bailey is ranked in the top 1% globally for his expertise in “Statistical Models” (0.51%). He boasts an h-index of 114 and has authored over 650 peer-reviewed publications, with more than 180 of those published in the past five years. His rigorous analyses have led to robust findings published in high-impact journals, including 26 articles in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and JAMA. His work has been heavily cited, with over 27,000 citations in the past five years and more than 57,000 career citations.