Alison Cornall

She qualified as a Registered General Nurse and Sick Children’s Nurse and her background is in intensive care and renal nursing.  Alison developed the role of Vascular Access Nurse Specialist at the Churchill hospital.  The value of this post has now been recognised and is part of the National Service Framework and NICE guidance for all renal units.

Alison was appointed Divisional Director of Nursing in November 2010 and was later appointed into the post of Deputy Divisional Director in April 2014.  She had undertaken a clinical management role as Matron prior to her current appointment.  She leads for Human Resources & Workforce, Clinical Governance and Nursing within the Surgery, Women’s and Oncology Division at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Constantin Coussios is the Director of the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering.  He received his BS, MEng and PhD in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, was a tutorial fellow in engineering at Magdalen between 2004 and 2010 and was elected to the first statutory chair in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford in 2011, with special responsibility for drug delivery and therapeutic devices.

Together with Professor Peter Friend he was founder of the Oxford University spin-out OrganOx Ltd., which has developed a novel normothermic perfusion device for improved liver and kidney preservation prior to transplantation through to first-in-man trials and first sales.  In 2014, he co-founded OxSonics Ltd., which is developing a new generation of ultrasound-based medical devices for drug delivery and minimally invasive surgery,  and in 2016 he co-founded OrthoSon Ltd,  which is developing minimally invasive replacement of the intervertebral disc. In 2017, he received the Silver Medal of the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering for his contributions to organ preservation and ultrasound-enhanced drug delivery. In 2019, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Rebecca Cullen joined the NHS in 2015 via the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme, having completed a BSc in Microbiology from the University of Leicester. She has worked in numerous NHS Trusts, including a brief stint in the NHS European Office and is now the Operational Services Manager for Maternity Services at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH).

Outside of her primary role she also sits on the Council of Governors for the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

In her previous role she was the Service Manager for the Renal and Transplant department at OUH, where she gained a MSc in Healthcare Leadership from the University of Birmingham and is a qualified Independent Assessor for the Human Tissue Authority.

Professor Peter Friend studied medicine at Cambridge and St Thomas’s Hospital and after qualifying trained as a surgeon in London and Cambridge including a period of research at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Professor Sir Roy Calne.

In 1988 he was appointed Visiting Assistant Professor of Surgery at Indiana University Medical Center, USA, where he was responsible for initiating a programme of liver transplantation.  He returned to the UK in 1989 to take up the post of University Lecturer (Honorary Consultant) in the University Department of Surgery at Cambridge. He was the Clinical Director of the Cambridge Transplant Unit and also a Fellow and Director of Studies in Medicine at Magdalene College, Cambridge. 

In 1999 he was appointed to the post of Professor of Transplantation at the University of Oxford and Consultant Transplant and Hepatobiliary Surgeon at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust.  At that time he was also appointed Director of the Oxford Transplant Centre. 

Since Professor Friend came to Oxford the numbers and types of transplant have increased.  The Unit now undertakes, kidney, pancreas, pancreatic islet and intestinal transplants.  For a number of years Oxford has been the largest pancreas transplant unit in Europe (in terms of numbers of transplants carried out each year).    

Peter's research interests lie in novel applications of normothermic organ perfusion, ranging from its use for extracorporeal support to preservation and repair prior to transplantation, as well as a wider range of interests in transplantation. He has published over 300 papers in scientific and medical journals.
In 2008, with an academic colleague in the Department of Engineering, Peter founded the University spin-out company, OrganOx, in order to develop the results of this research and translate it into clinical practice. He is currently the company’s (part-time) Chief Medical Officer, being primarily responsible for the pre-clinical and clinical trials of the OrganOx patented normothermic organ perfusion technology.

Peter has previously served as the President of the British Transplantation Society and as member of the Council of the International Transplantation Society. He is currently a member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. In 2020 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Consultant Transplant Nephrologist

Phil Mason qualified from Guy's Hospital in 1979 and after junior doctor posts mainly in London, he trained in nephrology and transplantation at Hammersmith Hospital. He undertook immunology research leading to a PhD following which he was appointed Clinical Lecturer and then Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant in 1994.  He moved to Oxford in 1995.

He has been the clinical lead for nephrology since 2009 and has a major interest in transplantation.  He established the antibody incompatible transplant programme in Oxford and is an investigator on several nephrology and transplant studies.  He sits on various national council related bodies including the NHSBT Kidney Advisory Group and the Living Donor Kidney Transplant 2020 Strategy Implementation Group. 

Kazbi Soonawalla is a Senior Research Fellow at the Said Business School and a Tutorial Fellow in Management at Keble College, University of Oxford.  Her research and teaching interests are financial and management accounting with a focus on banks and financial institutions, and budgeting practices.  Before coming to Oxford, Kazbi taught at the London School of Economics for over ten years.  She has a BA in Economics and Mathematics from Boston University, and MS (Statistics), MA (Economics) and PhD (Business) from Stanford University.