I am a Clinical Academic and work between Queen's University Belfast and Belfast Health and Social Care Trust where I work as a Consultant Chemical Pathologist. In my clinical work, I run specialist clinics helping people with:

• High cholesterol and other lipid disorders (including genetic conditions such as Familial Hypercholesterolaemia)
• Osteoporosis and other metabolic bone diseases
• Phenylketonuria (PKU)

I am also involved in the in-patient treatment of patients with all sorts of biochemical disturbances and have an interest in the biochemistry of acute illness.

I am the lead academic for Case Based Learning (CBL) in the first two years of the undergraduate medical programme. CBL utilises fictional patients to help contextualise medical students' learning from across the curriculum. Participation in CBL helps students think about patients as individuals in society with particular medical problems, and also helps develop problem-solving and team-building skills.

I am also the lead academic for careers in the medical school and aim to ensure that students leave university with a strong understanding of the various career pathways open to them.

Additionally, I teach on all aspects of Chemical Pathology, and have a real interest in helping students improve their use of the laboratory in investigating patients and in sharpening their clinical decision making ability. I coordinate a Student Selected Component on 'Inherited Metabolic Disease in Adults and Children.'

I have wide-reaching research interests in both educational and biomedical domains including:

• in medical education, I am involved in exploring the role of experience of 'stress' in medical simulation in an effort to understand and how it might be optimised to enhance learning.
• with colleagues in WWIEM, I am investigating the role of a protein called PCSK9 in the development of Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
• with other colleagues in WWIEM, I am involved in work that aims to better understand the processes underpinning vascular calcification in people with vascular risk factors.
• with colleagues in CPH, I have been involved in a study investigating the role of a herb called fenugreek in individuals with high circulating triglyceride levels.
• in Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, I have been involved in research involving novel lipid lowering treatments.

I am co-Editor in Chief for the Annals of Clinical Biochemistry.

I am on the Editorial Board for the Ulster Medical Journal.

I am a full committee member for the new NICE guideline on osteoporosis which is currently in development.

I am eLearning Coordinator for Europe and Africa for the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine.