Professor Alan Winston (lead clinician clinical trials centre)
Professor Alan Winston is a consultant physician at Imperial College Healthcare and a professor of HIV and genitourinary medicine at Imperial College London. He has an MD in antiretroviral clinical pharmacology and his research focuses on non-infectious co-morbidities associated with HIV-disease in the modern antiretroviral era, with a strong focus on central nervous system complications.
Professor Winston qualified from Glasgow University and undertook training in general medicine and HIV medicine in the UK and Australia. He leads the HIV and GU clinical trials unit at St Mary's Hospital. He is the principal clinical investigator on the POPPY study, a cohort study describing the incidence and nature of co-morbidities in HIV and was the Clinical Research Network lead for Covid-19 vaccine studies in north west London during the pandemic.
Professor Sarah Fidler (consultant in clinical trials):
Professor Sarah is an HIV consultant at Imperial College Healthcare and a senior academic at Imperial College London. Her main research focus is the strategic use of antiretroviral therapy and novel innovative therapies towards HIV cure. She led the SPARTAC trial, an international randomised trial testing the use of short course ART in acute infection. She leads the HIV UK CHERUB collaboration, which is a national NIHR-BRC supported consortium of community advocates, scientists and clinicians working to investigate HIV cure. She is a member of the international AIDS society cure and EU2 Cure initiatives.
Professor Fidler has led observational studies exploring measures of the HIV reservoir and immune responses. She was the chief investigator for the first randomised control trial in treated acute HIV infection testing. She is currently leading the RIO Trial, testing HIV-specific broadly neutralizing antibody infusions to control HIV instead of regular oral ARVs. She co-leads a multi-disciplinary care service for young adults with perinatally acquired HIV infection. In partnership with UKHSA, Professor Fidler also runs a national referral service for diagnostic and medical management for people with indeterminate HIV results and spontaneous viral controllers. She is a member of the British HIV association antiretroviral treatment guidelines committee.
Claire Petersen (lead nurse, HIV/Sexual health and infectious diseases research)
Claire is a registered nurse and midwife, with an MSc in reproductive and sexual health research from LSHTM. She has worked in HIV clinical trials since 2016. She completed an Imperial Health Charity pre-doctoral fellowship in 2023, and an NIHR PCAF in 2024, and co-founded the HIV Healthy Ageing Clinic at Wharfside Clinic, St Mary’s. Her research interest is around supporting people living with HIV through the ageing process, including preventing and managing frailty.
Wil Ayap (team leader)
Wil Ayap is a registered nurse. He worked in the John Warin Infectious Disease Ward, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, before transferring to London where he worked at the Jefferiss Wing Centre for Sexual Health at Imperial College Healthcare. He has worked in clinical research at the Clinical Trials Centre since 2013.
Wil has worked on many sexual health studies over the years, including several Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) studies which have led to PrEP being commissioned for use in England.
Junior doctors
Dr Ming Lee
Ming Lee is a clinical research fellow in sexual health and HIV at Imperial College London, and visitor to the Frater Lab, University of Oxford. He completed his specialty training at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2020. Currently his research includes investigating the impact of HIV-specific broadly neutralising antibodies in gut tissue, and the development of a novel assay for latent HIV reservoir measurement.
His academic interests include investigation of novel immunotherapeutics for HIV remission strategies. Other clinical interests include improving the quality of life for people living with HIV, and HIV and STI prevention in key populations. He is also a member of the BHIVA guidelines and external relations sub-committee and editorial fellow at the journal of Sexually Transmitted Infections.
Dr Merle Henderson
Merle Henderson is a Clinical Research Fellow in HIV at Imperial College London. She is currently undertaking a PhD in Infectious Disease; her research focuses on the effects of HIV on the central nervous system.
Dr Henderson qualified from the University of Manchester in 2014. She has subsequently worked in general and HIV Medicine in the UK and South Africa. She is working on several clinical trials in HIV and Genitourinary Medicine at the Clinical Trials Centre.
Dr Jesal Gohil
Dr Gohil qualified from The University of Liverpool in 2014. He has subsequently worked in HIV medicine in the UK and conducted research related to HIV in the Philippines. He is currently undertaking a PhD related to the safety and impact of novel HIV treatment strategies.
Research delivery team
Ian McGuinness
Ian McGuinness is a registered nurse and completed his training as a nurse in Cardiff in the 1990s. He moved to London after completing his training and worked on HIV wards for many years. He then worked at Wharfside Clinic, before moving to specialise in research at the Clinical Trials Centre in 2019.
Marcelino Molina
Marcelino Molina completed his nursing training in Cordoba, Spain, in 2010. He has a BSc in Biology (2002) and an MSc in Experimental Biosciences (2005).
He has worked as a nurse in London since 2012, in stroke inpatient care, cardiac catheter labs, oncology, and most recently in Covid-19 research. He joined the Clinical Trials Centre in October 2022.
Clive Matthews
Clive is an accredited clinical research practitioner. Their research journey started in 2015 at St Stephens AIDS Trust at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. He then went on to work on human challenge research for a private contract research organisation, before joining the infectious diseases research team at Imperial College in December 2021.
Rebecca Hall
Rebecca is a registered nurse who completed her training at Cardiff University before moving to London. She worked as a nurse in spinal cord injury and critical care. Rebecca started working in research in 2018 and has worked in various areas including HIV, COVID-19, and neurosurgery.
Professor Graham Taylor did his medical training at the University of Birmingham, graduating in 1981. He completed his general internal medicine training in England and Wales, before moving to the Solomon Islands in 1988, where he was chief medical officer (medicine) until 1991. On his return to the UK, he joined St Mary’s Hospital Medical School as an MRC clinical research fellow, working on HIV clinical trials. In 1992 he co-founded the HTLV-1 research clinic (now the National Centre for Human Retrovirology, and the HIV antenatal service at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He is currently head of the Section of Virology and head of the Molecular Diagnostics Unit at Imperial College London. His clinical and research interests are improving the diagnosis and treatment of HTLV-1 associated diseases, prevention of HTLV-1 transmission, managing HIV in pregnancy and the application of molecular tools to diagnose bacterial and fungal infections causing sepsis.
Professor Graham Cooke
Professor Graham Cooke is an NIHR senior investigator, based in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London. He leads the infection and antimicrobial resistance theme for the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre (BRC). A major focus of his research has been to provide the scientific evidence underpinning efforts to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat through investigation of disease burden, modelling, and clinical studies (PROLIFICA and STOPHCV consortia and STOPHCV-1 trial). In response to Covid-19, he co-ordinated the virtual Covid-19 theme of the NIHR Imperial BRC and was a member of the World Health Organisation Covid-19 treatment guidelines group. He led clinical development of the COVIDnudge diagnostic and is a principal investigator for the REACT studies which have recruited over 3 million people to self-testing studies for Covid-19.
He is active in promoting access to medicine and patient safety. A member since 2015, he chairs the WHO Committee on the Selection and Use of Essential Medicines, responsible for updating and maintaining the WHO Essential Medicines List (EML) and other areas of medicines use, such as the AWaRe index. He was appointed to the expert groups in HIV and hepatitis (the latter as convenor) for the Infected Blood Inquiry. He is a non-executive director and deputy chair of the board of the MHRA.
Dr Borja Mora-Peris
Dr Borja MoraPeris is a consultant in HIV and sexual health at Imperial College Healthcare. He finished his internal medicine training in 2010 at Hospital Clinic, in Barcelona. Following this, he undertook HIV research in Johannesburg exploring access to care and completed a Masters in Tropical Medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
He completed his PhD exploring antiretroviral activity within the central nervous system, and has published widely in this area. He currently works clinically at St Mary’s Hospital, where he is the lead for HIV/TB coinfection, and runs the undergraduate placement in HIV medicine and sexual health. His research interests more recently include HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, management of gonorrhoea and HIV cure.
Dr Lamsi Dosekun
Dr Lamsi Dosekun is a consultant in sexual health and HIV at Imperial College Healthcare. She is the lead clinician for sexual health in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, post and pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV, and the head of specialty for sexual health. Their sexual health interests are in STI and HIV prevention in patients in high-risk groups, and she set up the now well-established PrEP and PEP service.
She has been co-investigator on numerous clinical trials in HIV and sexual health, including the PROUD study, and was principal investigator on the NHSE multicentre IMPACT PrEP trial and the Discover PrEP trial.
Dr Nicky Mackie
Dr Nicky Mackie is a consultant in HIV medicine at Imperial College Healthcare. She completed her speciality training at St Mary’s Hospital and undertook research in the field of HIV-1 drug resistance. She runs the virtual clinic for discussion of complex management issues in persons living with HIV.
She is vice-chair of the British HIV Association (BHIVA), sits on the BHIVA Conferences and BHIVA Audit and Standards Committees, and is involved in writing national guidelines. In addition, she is a member of the National HIV Clinical Reference Group (CRG), co-chair of the NHSE London HIV Clinical Forum, and co-chair of the NWL sector CRG for HIV and Sexual Health.
She has a keen interest in education and teaching. She is the deputy convenor for the diploma in HIV Medicine (UK) and chair of the Examination Board for the forthcoming European diploma in HIV Medicine.
Dr Fareed Shiva
Dr Fareed Shiva has been a consultant in sexual health and HIV at Imperial College Healthcare since 2020. He previously completed a master's course in tropical medicine and international health in London. His area of specialist interest is syphilis and neurosyphilis, and he leads the syphilis team at Jefferiss Clinic. He has published a few papers in peer-reviewed journals on the subject and regularly gives talks at national events. He has been the principal site investigator for the TREP AB trial, an international RCT for the management of syphilis.
