Medical Advisory Group

Prof Ray Borrow is Head of the Vaccine Evaluation Unit at the Public Health England (PHE) North West, Manchester, UK, where he is responsible for the evaluation of serological responses to various bacterial and viral vaccines with a special interest in meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines. He is also the Deputy Head of the PHE Meningococcal Reference Unit for England and Wales.

Ray gained his PhD in 1994, his MRCPath in 2003, became an Honorary Professor of Vaccine Preventable Diseases at the University of Manchester in 2009 and Visiting Professor of the Manchester Metropolitan University in 2011. His scientific findings resulted in over 330 peer reviewed published papers. He has previously served as a member of the DoH Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and frequently advises WHO and companies on both meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines.

Adam Finn is Head of the Academic Unit of Child Health at Bristol Medical School, School of Clinical Sciences and an honorary consultant in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology at Bristol Royal Hospital for Children. He is director of the South West Medicines for Children Research Network and heads the Bristol Children's Vaccine Centre. He trained in Infectious Diseases at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and in Immunology at the Institute of Child Health in London where he obtained his PhD.

He worked in Sheffield between 1992 and 2001 where he was involved in several trials of meningococcal group C and other vaccines. His current main research interest is the mucosal immune response to respiratory bacteria including pneumococcus and meningococcus.

Paul Heath is a Professor / Honorary Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases at St George’s, University of London and Vaccine Institute in London. His training in paediatrics and infectious diseases was at the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne, the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford and St George’s Hospital, London. His particular research interests are in the epidemiology of vaccine preventable diseases, in clinical vaccine trials, particularly in at-risk groups, and in perinatal infections. He coordinates a national neonatal infection surveillance network (neonIN) and recently, a national study on neonatal meningitis. He sits on national committees concerned with meningitis, Group B streptococcus prevention, Pneumococcal and Hib infections, neonatal infections and on immunisation policies in children. He is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, a member of the research committee of the European Society of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and a member of the steering committee of the international Brighton Collaboration on vaccine safety.

Professor Nigel Klein is Professor and Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, London, and the Institute of Child Health, University College London. He trained at UCL, obtaining degrees in Anatomy and in Medicine. He worked in the three London centres specialising in Paediatric Infectious Diseases before completing his formal training at ICH/GOSH. He is currently Head of Infectious Diseases Unit at ICH and was Head of the Department of Infection at UCL until 2008. He has been working in the fields of Meningitis and Sepsis for many years, in both a clinical and academic capacity. Nigel is a scientific advisor for a number of medical research charities.

Rachel Kneen studied medicine in Nottingham, before taking up a clinical research post at the University of Oxford, Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Unit, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. During this post, she developed an interest in central nervous system (CNS) infections and participated in many research projects on infectious diseases including meningitis, encephalitis (mostly caused by Japanese Encephalitis virus), tuberculous meningitis, dengue haemorrhagic fever, rabies, typhoid, tetanus and diphtheria, . Following her return to the UK, she became a Paediatric Registrar in the Oxford and then Mersey Deanery. She became a Consultant Paediatric Neurologist at Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in 2005. She has a clinical interest in CNS infectious and and she runs a joint specialist clinic for Neuroinflammatory disorders with rheumatology colleagues at her Trust.

Dr Kneen is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer and an Associate member of the Institute of Infection & Global Health, University of Liverpool (www.liv.ac.uk/infection-and-global-health). She continues her research interest in CNS infections in the Liverpool Brain Infections Group by leading on the paediatric aspects of many research projects. She has a particular interest in improving the management of patients with CNS infections. She is also on the professional advisory panel for the Encephalitis Society and is a co-convenor of the Liverpool Neuro-Infectious Diseases Course (www.liv.ac.uk/neuroidcourse).

Michael Levin is Professor of Paediatrics and International Child Health at Imperial College London. He trained in medicine in South Africa and in paediatrics in the UK before specialising in infectious diseases. His research has focused on life threatening infections of childhood. He is the co-ordinator of a European Commission FP7 award studying the genetic basis of meningococcal and other life threatening bacterial infections of childhood, working with a consortium of colleagues from Europe, Africa and Singapore.

Fergal Monsell has been a Consultant Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon at the Royal Hospital for Children, Bristol since 2005. He worked in the same capacity at The Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond Street and The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore between 1997 and 2005.

He completed his higher surgical training at the University of Manchester and fellowship training at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Sydney, Australia.

He has a broad based practice with a special interest in limb reconstruction surgery using a spectrum of contemporary techniques. He has considerable experience in the management of patients with the skeletal consequences of septicaemia and contributes to a multi-disciplinary team specifically managing this patient group. He is active in all aspects of paediatric trauma and has published on this subject.

He has an active clinical and basic science research portfolio and received a Doctorate of Philosophy in 2010, defending a thesis that explored the effect of chemotherapy on regenerate bone formation in distraction osteogenesis.

Fiona McGill graduated from medical school at the University of Aberdeen in 2000. She moved south of the border one year later to take up a medical rotation in Middlesbrough. After 2 and half years there she pursued her interest in Infectious Diseases and took up a clinical fellow post in Newcastle-Upon Tyne.

After a year in New Zealand and the diploma in tropical medicine she moved back to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne where she started her specialist registrar training in Infectious Diseases. Within the year she obtained a training number in the Yorkshire and The Humber region in infectious diseases and microbiology.

Since April 2011 she has taken some time out of clinical duties to work as a Clinical Research Fellow in the Liverpool Brain Infections Group with Prof Tom Solomon and his team working on an epidemiological study on viral meningitis in the UK and funded by us.

Simon Nadel has been a Consultant in Paediatric Intensive Care since 1994. Prior to this he trained in paediatric infectious diseases. He has been involved in coordinating and running therapeutic trials in children with meningococcal and other septic shock, and has taken part in research studies into the pathophysiology, treatment and outcome of meningococcal disease in children. He has been involved in writing clinical guidelines for the management of children with septicaemia and meningitis.

Nelly Ninis is currently a consultant in General Paediatrics at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. She has completed training in paediatric infectious diseases and immunology and has an MSc in tropical medicine. She worked for three years on the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit at St Mary’s when it was a specialist referral unit for meningococcal sepsis.

She conducted the RCPCH study on healthcare delivery and the outcome of meningococcal disease in children, funded by MRF. From this study she has developed an interest in the way sepsis is diagnosed both in primary and secondary care.

Dr Ninis is also a part of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) Guideline Development Group for Meningitis and Septicaemia.