Maxine Mackintosh

Maxine Mackintosh works at the intersection of data science and AI, equity and diversity, and health and genomics. Her work cuts across institutional strategy, grassroots organising, and academic research, with a strong focus on real-world translation and practice-informed learning. At the Ellison Institute of Technology, she helps shape global health strategy with a particular emphasis on equity and data-driven innovation. She is also the co-founder of One HealthTech, a global grassroots community championing inclusion in health innovation, and Data Science for Health Equity, a community of practice connecting researchers and practitioners working to ensure data and tech benefit all populations. Maxine’s academic work, affiliated with both the Centre for Personalised Medicine and the Alan Turing Institute, explores issues of fairness, bias and inclusion in health data, always with a view to practical application and impact. She previously led the Diverse Data programme at Genomics England, overseeing national efforts to improve the diversity of genomic datasets in the UK. Maxine is passionate about tackling complex problems that sit at the messy intersection of science, technology, ethics and social justice, but always tries to approach this work with a spirit of fun, creativity, and joy. She’s been lucky to be part of fellowship communities like Sciana and Churchill, and to have served on a range of boards including the DeepMind Health Independent Review Board and Health Innovation East. She also really, really likes fancy dress.

Dr Claire Schwartz

Claire will be supporting the development and delivery of research and engagement projects between Clinical Ethics, Law and Society (CELS) and the Centre. She will strengthen and enrich existing research partnerships and help to build new connections with partners and collaborators to advance the mission of the Centre and its overall vision. 

Claire previously managed an applied health research programme with strong links to the NHS. She was involved in developing collaborations between researchers and health care workers to improve day-to-day care in the NHS, building capacity to make research an integral part of healthcare professional jobs and identifying opportunities to expand the research and maximise its potential to solve real-world problems. Claire has experience of research in large clinical trials and studies and expertise in quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Dr Nishtha Bharti

Nishtha is an Affiliate Researcher with CPM and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the ‘Clinical Ethics, Law, and Society’ group at the Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. She is leading a study that aims to understand the complex dynamics that shape identity descriptors – such as race, ethnicity, and ancestry – in genomic medicine and their impact on mapping accessibility and equitability of care.

Nishtha’s research is situated within the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and she combines it with her previous training and teaching experience in Political Science. She engages with techno-scientific trajectories in healthcare (particularly digital, data-driven technologies and Artificial Intelligence) and their unfolding across diverse socio-political contexts and transcontinental sites. Through her collaborations she has also looked at the politicisation of specific COVID drugs to understand the peculiarities of crisis governance and to analyse how knowledge claims are legitimised.

In her broader research pursuits, Nishtha’s enquiries span the shifting socio-political logics, contested values and competing epistemic frames in healthcare reforms through emerging technologies. She completed her PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. More information about her research can be found here.

Dr Louisa Chenciner

Louisa is a public health physician with demonstrated experience in climate health, syndemics, and social protection. Last year, she was awarded an NIHR funded academic clinical fellowship in public health medicine. Louisa’s work spans academia and real-world public health, with a commitment to addressing the intersections between climate change, sustainability and health. She is currently an honorary research fellow at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and an active member of the Oxford University Clinical Academic Graduate School. She also works in local government at Oxfordshire County Council, and contributes regularly to the on-call rota for health protection at the UK Health Security Agency. To date, Louisa has a range of clinical and academic experience in the UK, Sweden, India and Brazil.

Sally Sansom

Sally is a Junior Research Fellow within the Centre for Personalised Medicine and a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) candidate within the Health Economics Research Centre (HERC) at the University of Oxford. Prior to commencing her DPhil, Sally worked for eight-years in roles spanning health economics and strategy consulting, and medical research / clinical trial project management. Sally also holds a Bachelor of Biomedicine (genetics major) from the University of Melbourne, and a Master of Public Health (health economics specialism) from Monash University in Australia.

Sally is passionate about progressing the health economics evidence base required to support the cost-effective translation of genomic diagnostic and therapeutic technologies into routine care. In particular, Sally’s research interests lie in improving our understanding of how best to measure the outcomes from genome sequencing for rare disease diagnosis in economic evaluations. Sally is also interested in exploring the spill-over effects of genomic information within families.

More information about Sally’s research can be found here.

Dr Rachel Horton

Rachel is training as a clinical geneticist and is spending some time doing dedicated clinical ethics research alongside her PhD.

Rachel’s research, funded by a Wellcome Trust Research Award for Health Professionals in Humanities and Social Sciences, explores what we should consider to be a genomic result. Genomic testing identifies the millions of variations that each of us has within our genetic code, and Rachel is interested in how and why decisions are made as to which of these variations should be considered the ‘result’ of a genomic test.

Rachel studied medicine at Oxford, doing an intercalated BA in Molecular Medicine in 2008. She worked as a junior doctor in the Severn deanery before moving to Southampton in 2015 to train in clinical genetics. She completed an MSc in Genomic Medicine at the University of Southampton in 2018.

Dr Ali Kay

Ali joined the CPM in September 2023. She is currently a co-investigator on an NIHR Research for Patient Benefit funded project – iPREGCARE. This project is investigating the implications of a new personalised recurrence risk assessment for couples who have had a child with a serious genetic condition. Ali also has a research interest in experiences with direct-to-consumer DNA testing. She is a member of the Association of Genetic Nurses and Counsellors (AGNC) and British Psychological Society (BPS). In addition to her research, Ali has over ten years experience in rare disease patient advocacy in research and is committed to both evidencing experiences of patients and families in personalised medicine and effective public involvement and engagement.

Ali completed her doctorate at Nuffield College, Oxford. She was an early career researcher applying social science approaches to history before pivoting and adding masters degrees in Genomic Counselling and Psychology. She has worked at the University of Oxford since 2022 and previously as a research fellow at Northumbria University, King’s College London, and the University of Westminster and also held teaching positions at Lancaster University and the Open University.

Dr Susie Weller

Susie Weller is a CPM Research Fellow. Her current work forms part of the ‘Ethical Preparedness in Genomic Medicine’ study (Wellcome Trust, 2018-25), which combines conceptual, empirical, and theoretical work to examine the ethical and social challenges that arise for those living and working with genetic and genomic results. Susie draws on a range of conceptual tools from family and lifecourse sociology and employs qualitative longitudinal research approaches to explore, over time, interactions between individuals, those within their networks, and the wider social processes and structures shaping their experiences. She is particularly interested in: how patients and families navigate different routes through genomic medicine; the resources and support on which they draw to manage the process; how participants conceive of their data journey; and how caring relationships, identities and practices evolve over time.

Dr Sarah Briggs

Sarah Briggs is one of the CPM’s Junior Research Fellows in Medical Sciences. Her DPhil research, funded by the Medical Research Council, evaluated the use of polygenic risk scores in predicting bowel cancer risk. Sarah’s ongoing research interests include assessing the environmental impact of the genomic technologies increasingly employed to personalise healthcare. She studied medicine at the University of Oxford, and is a clinician, training in Medical Oncology in Oxford.

Catherine Lidbetter

Catherine is responsible for the operational running and day-to-day development of the Centre for Personalised Medicine. She liaises with the administrative, development, communications, finance and publicity offices at St Anne’s College, and with the Centre for Human Genetics, the Medical Sciences Division and more broadly across other University of Oxford departments. Catherine manages the CPM website and co-organises the CPM’s events.

Catherine’s background is in Librarianship. She worked as a subject librarian at Oxford Brookes University for over a decade and at the University of Reading prior to that. Her first degree is in Music.