Jonathan Cavanagh
David Heal
Jordi Lopez-Tremoleda
Emma Robinson
Amin Rostami-Hodjegan
S Clare Stanford
Jonathan Cavanagh is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Glasgow and an honorary consultant neuropsychiatrist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
He leads a group that is focused on exploring mechanisms underlying immune-mediated behaviours relevant to major psychiatric disorders using the techniques of molecular neuroimmunology.
David is an Executive Director and co-founder of DevelRx Ltd. DevelRx provides consultancy support to pharmaceutical companies developing novel CNS drugs. His initial training was as a neuroscientist and behavioural pharmacologist at the University of Oxford.
After a career in academic research, he joined the pharmaceutical industry with responsibility for CNS and metabolic drug research at Boots Pharmaceuticals and BASF Pharma. He co-founded and for 20 years was an Executive Director at the non-clinical CRO, RenaSci, before leaving to set up DevelRx. His experience in R&D encompasses the approval of 15 novel drugs for indications including ADHD, binge-eating disorder, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy, opiate withdrawal, opiate-induced adverse events, anaesthesia, haemodialysis-induced pruritis, and obesity.
He was awarded a DSc by Kings College, London University for his contribution to pharmacology research. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Bath, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a member of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has authored more than 200 scientific articles and reviews, co-edited books and journal special issues on a range of clinical topics and serves on the editorial boards of several international scientific journals.
Jordi L. Tremoleda is a PhD-qualified veterinarian and Associate Professor in Animal Welfare and Science at Queen Mary University of London. He holds advanced degrees in veterinary medicine, bioethics, and higher education, and is a Diplomate of the European College of Laboratory Animal Medicine. He is active in professional organizations like LASA and LAVA and serves on the editorial board of Laboratory Animals. His research focuses on refining experimental models of polytrauma and CNS injury to enhance translational relevance while ensuring high standards of animal welfare.
Emma completed her BSc(Hons) and PhD in at the University of Bristol. She was awarded an RCUK Academic Fellowship in 2006 and worked at the University of Cambridge before returning to Bristol to establish her independent research group. Now based in Bristol’s School of Psychology and Neuroscience, Emma’s research investigates the mechanisms which regulate normal and pathological cognitive and emotional behaviour.
Her work is particularly interested in developing new behavioural approaches to explore the relationship between psychological and experience-dependent mechanisms which contribute to the development and treatment of mood disorders. Complementing the psychopharmacology research, the group runs a programme in animal welfare and research integrity from which the 3Hs (Housing, Handling, Habituation) framework and initiative emerged.
The Institute of Scientific Information (ISI, Clativate) listed Amin as one of the world’s most highly cited researchers (under ‘Pharmacology & Toxicology’) in 2017. Amin is at 0.07% top rank of the Highly Cited Researchers List by Stanford University (published by Elsevier) for Pharmacology (2024), and ScholarGPS puts him among the top 20 scientists contributing to “drug metabolism” and top 50 for “pharmacokinetics”. He has published over 330 peer reviewed influential scientific articles (>26,000 citations, h-index = 87, Google Scholar) covering various aspects of pharmaceutics, clinical/translational/systems pharmacology.
As the Director of Centre for Applied Pharmacokinetic Research (CAPKR) at the University of Manchester since 2017r, Amin collaborates with many pharmaceutical companies with a view to transfer latest scientific knowledge into model-informed drug development. Amin was co-founder of two spin-off companies from the University of Sheffield (Simcyp Limited [now part of Certara Inc]) and Diurnal Limited [now part of Neurocrine Bioscience]). As a leader in the field of physiologically-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK) and Quantitative Systems Pharmacology (QSP), he is internationally recognized and he was one of the founding editors of Pharmacometrics and System Pharmacology in addition to serving on the Editorial Boards of many other pharmacology journals.
As the Senior Vice President of Research & Development (SVP) and Chief Scientific Officer at Certara (since 2014), he facilitates the integration of the latest translational modelling to bio-simulation platforms offered by Certara to its clients, with the aim of accelerating the drug development and regulatory approval.
