The Mi-Trial team
Professor Alex Horsley
Chairman
Alex is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Manchester, consultant at the Manchester Adult Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Centre, and CF academic lead for the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. He is a director of the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility at Wythenshawe Hospital, where he oversees trials activity in a wide range of specialties. He is responsible for initiating and maintaining one of the largest CF trials programs in the country, having led >20 trials of new therapies in CF since 2012 and making Manchester one of the leading sites for CF clinical trials internationally. He has been national or global lead on trials of several ground-breaking therapies, including transformative new CFTR modulator therapies. He has experience at all phases of clinical trials and has also designed and delivered clinical trials in acute COVID19.
Professor Jacky Smith
Chief Scientific Officer
Jacky is a Professor of Respiratory Medicine at the University of Manchester and an Honorary Consultant at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust. She runs a multi-disciplinary research team which focuses on understanding mechanisms underlying pathological cough and a regional clinical service seeing patients with refractory chronic cough. She is also the Director of the NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility and Leads the Rapid Translational Incubator Theme of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre.
David Rogers
Chief Financial Officer
David has 30 years’ experience in clinical research. In 1999 he joined the Medicines Evaluation Unit Ltd as Director of Operations and was instrumental in turning a grant-funded NHS department into a successful Phase I clinical trials unit and winner of the Queens Award for Enterprise. He is also a Director and co-founder of MEU Solutions Ltd, a CRO offering clinical trials services to Pharma worldwide. Previously he held senior finance roles in the NHS, in the areas of Contracting and Management Accounting. He is a member of the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) phase 1 stakeholder committee and also helped develop the NHS clinical trials agreement the mCTA.
Professor Paul O’Brien
Chief Executive Officer
Professor Paul O' Brien was appointed CEO of ELAROS 24/7 in April 2012.
Paul has held senior posts in the private sector (Chief Executive), local government (Chief Officer), health (Director in West Essex NHS Trust) and education (Head of Department).
He has previous venture start-up experience having established the Essex Development and Regeneration Agency with a turnover of £8.5 million and funds under management of £15 million - employing 60 planners, economists, surveyors, bid writers and fund managers.
He has extensive experience of public sector transformation having externalised a local government service and more recently the externalisation of a £33 Million NHS Service.
Paul also has broad non-executive board experience gained over a 15 year period and has completed the Institute of Directors Diploma in Company Direction.
Paul's work in business & management education in Russia and Bulgaria, in the 1990s, secured the Queen's Anniversary Prizes for Higher & Further Education.
Paul is a visiting lecturer to the University of Surrey on its MBA & MSc Entrepreneurship programmes.
James McMunn
Lead Software Developer
James has worked for 20+ years around a broad set of technologies and across a wide range of sectors, including; Health, Insurance, Finance, and Travel (The British Library, Jet2 and Confused.com).
James has worked on complex software projects, from building databases, assessing security risks, streamlining backend code to building cloud infrastructure.
Over the past four years James has been working with ELAROS on a range of health apps and on a web-based health commissioning platform.
James is the lead software developer for the Mi-Trial platform.
Oliwia Zwara
Sales Manager
Oliwia is the Sales Manager at Mi-Trial, and will be working on the commercialisation of the system. She will also be helping with marketing endeavours, drawing on her experience as the Business Communications Manager at ELAROS.
Oliwia started work with Elaros in July 2022, initially as a part time intern, whilst completing her master’s degree in Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield. Oliwia's degree specialised in Tissue Engineering and Biomaterials which explored computer science, medicine and material science as well as industry focused project management among many other areas. Since completing her degree, Oliwia has continued her work for Elaros, and joined the Mi-trial team.
Oliwia aims to bring her experience of commercialisation, marketing, market research and communications to her role at Mi-Trial.
Stephen White
Software Quality Engineer
Stephen has over 20 years' experience in software development and quality assurance. In 2020 he joined the Medicines Evaluation Unit Ltd as a Software Quality Engineer and has been working on their internal software development projects, along with adding his experience to the Mi-Trial application testing process.
Stephen has a degree in Computing in Business from Huddersfield University and has worked in software development and quality assurance across multiple industries from legal (Barristers and Solicitors) to digital marketing, retail, insurance, leisure and hospitality.