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 Associate Director with responsibility for the undergraduate medical curriculum. 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 have been 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 a Full Member of the International Federation of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine Taskforce on Global eLearning/eAcademy.

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