SDRN Executive Group
John Petrie
Dr John Petrie is Reader in Diabetic Medicine at the University of Dundee and has researched the mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction in insulin resistant states since the inception of this field in the mid 1990s. Active current research funding includes from Diabetes UK, the British Heart Foundation and the Translational Medicine Research Consortium. As Chair of the Chief Scientist Office-funded Scottish Diabetes Research Network, he is directing national efforts to enhance the infrastructure for diabetes clinical trials in Scotland and to create a platform for nationwide unintrusive epidemiology studies using anonymised data from SCI-DC, the national diabetes management system. As well as serving on national and international grant-awarding panels (e.g. US Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation), Dr Petrie is a member of the Steering Group of the European Group for the Study of Insulin Resistance (www.egir.org) - currently running the largest ever insulin euglycaemic clamp cohort study in 20 sites across Europe (EU-funded). He has around 80 refereed scientific publications in the last decade, and is co-editor of a book entitled "New Perspectives on Hypertension" which has sold tens of thousands of copies in several editions. He was a founding member of the International Society of Diabetes and Vascular Disease Research in 2004 and has given invited lectures at numerous UK and European scientific meetings and conferences.
Alistair Emslie-Smith
Dr Alistair Emslie-Smith has been a General Practitioner in a large inner-city Practice in Dundee, Scotland, since 1990. He has day-to-day responsibility for the care of the 350 patients with diabetes in his Practice. He is Lead Clinician of Tayside Diabetes Managed Clinical Network, which co-ordinates integrated diabetes services across NHS Tayside. He has been involved in the DARTS (Diabetes Audit & Research in Tayside, Scotland) project since its inception in 1996. He chairs the Steering Group of the SCI-DC (Scottish Care Information - Diabetes Collaboration) national diabetes ICT programme and sits on the Scottish Diabetes Group. He is a director of The Worldwide Initiative for Diabetes Education ("WorldWIDE"), an international charitable foundation that seeks to encourage and promote better management and care of people with diabetes through enhancing professional education and providing practical information to improve self-management. He gave the Mary McKinnon Lecture at the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference in March 2007.
Robert Lindsay
Dr Robert Lindsay graduated in Medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1988 and is Clinical Senior Lecturer in the BHF Cardiovascular Research Centre (Western Infirmary, University of Glasgow). He completed his PhD in fetal programming in Edinburgh in 1997 and postdoctoral work with the diabetes epidemiology group of the National Institutes of Health in Phoenix, Arizona. His principal research interests are early life and genetic determinants of diabetes with particular interest in diabetes and pregnancy. Current projects a follow up study to the Fetal Insulin and Glycaemia Study (FIGS). The original study examined the effect of a mother’s type 1 diabetes during pregnancy on growth and hormonal axes of her child at birth. The follow up study (funded by the British Heart Foundation) is inviting children born in the original FIGS collaboration to an examination of diabetes risk factors and obesity at age 7. The study will investigate the health of children born to mothers with diabetes and examine the hypothesis that maternal diabetes in utero exerts a "programming" effect to increase the risk of diabetes and obesity in children. Dr Lindsay is also a co-investigator in the Scottish Family Health Study- a multi-centre study examining the genetic basis of common complex disease in the Scottish population.
Donald Pearson
Dr Donald Pearson is a Consultant Diabetologist and Physician, Aberdeen; Lead Clinician for Diabetes in Scotland and Chair of the Scottish Diabetes Group. After Undergraduate life in Biochemistry and Medicine at Glasgow University, Donald completed his postgraduate training in Glasgow, Inverness and Aberdeen. He was appointed Consultant Physician/Diabetologist in Aberdeen in 1984. Until recently he was lead Clinician for the Diabetes Managed Clinical Network in Grampian and Head of Specialist Diabetes Services working closely with patients and colleagues of all disciplines in the development of integrated diabetes care. Research interests include pregnancy (previous Chair of the Diabetic Pregnancy Study Group of the EASD), diabetes in young people (recent Chairman of the Scottish Study Group for the Care of Diabetes in the Young) and the organisation and development of diabetes services. He is currently Lead Clinician for Diabetes in Scotland and Chair of the Scottish Diabetes Group.
Frank Sullivan
Prof. Frank Sullivan is an academic GP whose research focus is on improving the management of patients with long-term conditions, including Diabetes. His academic work, as the NHSTayside Professor of Research and Development in General Practice and Primary Care is based in Tayside Centre for General practice, part of Community Health Sciences in the University of Dundee where he is the head of division. He is also the director of the Scottish School of Primary Care. In both of these roles he is working to increase the number of trials and other methodologically rigorous research undertaken in primary care in Scotland, the UK and internationally. He is a member of the Clinical Studies Advisory Group of the UK Diabetes Research Network and a member of the Scottish Diabetes Research Network. He is also a member of the UK clinical research collaboration (UKCRC) R&D Advisory Group to Connecting for Health, a member of the MRC College of experts, The Health Services Research Committee of the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) in Scotland and an editorial advisor to the BMJ. He has published 138 peer reviewed journal articles. Outwith academia he enjoys playing football, hillwalking and cycling. He and his wife are currently in training for a charity cycle in Vietnam to support the Medical Foundation For The Care Of Victims Of Torture.
Johnny McKnight
John McKnight graduated from Queens University, Belfast in 1983. He trained in Northern Ireland and spent two years as a research fellow at Harvard University. He was appointed Consultant Physician and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Department of Medicine, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh in 1994. He became Clinical Director in 2000 and Lothian Diabetes Managed Clinical Network Clinical Lead in 2003. He is chairman of the Scottish Diabetes Survey Monitoring Group and was deputy-chairman of the Quality Improvement Scotland Diabetes Standards Sub-group. He is currently Speciality Advisor to the Scottish Executive and a member of the Scottish Diabetes Group. He chairs the Diabetes SIGN Guideline Committee (2008) and has recently been asked to chair a Quality Improvement Scotland National Data Advisory Group. He has been awarded a Health Foundation team leadership award and the 2006 Hospital Doctor diabetes team of the year award. He has research interests in prevention of diabetes, vascular disease in diabetes, epidemiology of diabetes and its complications and in remote monitoring of diabetes.
Shona Brearley
Shona Brearley has been Network Manager of SDRN since it was commissioned in April 2006. She has worked in diabetes research for the last nine years as a Diabetes Specialist Research Nurse managing multiple complex trials for both commercial and academic funders. Shona trained as a nurse at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy and worked as a staff nurse in a general surgical unit before moving into clinical research post in 1994. After spending five years in the Phase I drug trials unit in Ninewells Hospital & Medical School. Coordinating first-in-man studies Shona moved to diabetes research. In the last few years, Shona has been part of the operational steering committees for both the wellcome Trust Case Control Study into the Genetics of Diabetes and Generation Scotland: The Scottish Family Health Study. Her specialist interests are in the training and development of the research nurse role and in the recruitment and retention of patients in studies. Outside of work, Shona spends her spare time competing with her horse (Jasper) and walking her dogs, Tessa and Fingal.
