DPUK Team | DPAU

John Gallacher

Institution: University of Oxford

Occupation: Director, DPUK & Professor of Cognitive Health

Biography: John Gallacher is Professor of Cognitive Health at Oxford University and Director of Dementias Platform UK (DPUK), an MRC-funded public-private partnership focused on accelerating research into the early detection and treatment of dementia. With a new diagnosis every three seconds and more than 50 million cases globally, dementia is one of the biggest public health challenges facing science and governments in the 21st century.

An expert on brain health and the use of big data in medical research, Professor Gallacher holds a visiting professorship at Imperial College London and an honorary professorship at the University of Hong Kong. He is the principal investigator for the Caerphilly Prospective Study and a member of the UK Biobank steering group.

Sarah Bauermeister

Institution: University of Oxford

Occupation: Senior Data Manager & Senior Scientist DPUK - DPUK application pre-cohort triage and data curation lead

Biography: Sarah is a senior researcher working across multiple projects. Sarah is programme lead for the DPUK datathon intiative, lead for the DPUK user group, programme lead for the DPUK data curation project and scientific lead for an international DPUK collaborative project in Alzheimer's disease. She is scientific reviewer for DPUK Data Portal research applications.

Sarah's psychometric work includes conducting Item Response Theory (IRT) analyses on mental health, lifestyle and healthcare scale data, investigating item-level information and scale reliability. She also utilises Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to explore comorbidities, such as cognition and mental health, child adversity and adult biomedical outcomes and dementia. Her previous research focused on the cognitive predictors of falls and frailty in older adults, and poor mental health as a comorbidity with cognitive decline and dementia.

Simon Thompson

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: Chief Technology Officer (Secured Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL), SeRP, DPUK)

Biography: Simon Thompson is the Head of IT - Data Science at Swansea University, Department of Medicine. He is a systems architect with many years’ experience in the NHS and academia. He is the Chief Technology Officer of a large team of talented, diverse skilled software developers. Simon leads the innovation, design, development and implementation of all SAIL technical system developments. He is responsible for delivering the technical workstream for Swansea as part of the UK network of health e-research centres of excellence. He works alongside the Swansea based team that work on the DPUK Data Portal. 

Richard Hier

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: SeRP Programme Manager

Biography: Richard is the SeRP Programme Manager, with over 15 years of experience working in NHS, private sector and academia. Richard’s role has been focused on support services, IT implementation and customer/supplier relationship management. Richard is responsible for the relationships with all organisations using SeRP across the UK and globally. It’s a role that Richard enjoys, understanding their challenges and identifying how SeRP can be best delivered to support the ongoing needs of research organisations globally. Richard oversees the project management of the SeRP Technical Teams to ensure a coordinated delivery of SeRP products to all their collaborative organisations. Richard is a registered PRINCE2 practitioner and holds ITIL, MSP and other best practice qualifications. When outside of the office, Richard is a keen cyclist and enjoys nothing more than walks with his dog.

Emma Squires

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: Data Project Manager

Biography: Emma is the Data Project Manager for Dementias Platform UK. Based at Swansea University, she manages the development of all the functionality in the Data Portal including integration of the imaging and genetics platforms.

Mark Newbury

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: Administrative Support Officer, DPUK

Biography: Mark facilitates communication between the researchers who are applying for data through DPUK, and our collaborating cohorts.

Simon Young

Institution: University of Oxford

Occupation: DPUK Senior Project Manager

Biography: Simon Young is Senior Project Manager, DPUK at Oxford University, responsible for operational management across all of DPUK’s work packages and reporting progress and developments to its funders. Simon initially started working at DPUK in January 2019 as project manager for an international cross-platform interoperability project, before moving to his current role in January 2021.

Simon has a PhD in Statistics and has worked on research and development activities within the health care, chemical, financial services and insurance industries. Simon has extensive experience of managing projects and teams across multiple disciplines and geographical areas.

Michael Bale

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: Web Development Co-Ordinator

Biography: Mike is the Lead User Experience Designer & Developer for the Population Data Science group at Swansea University Medical School.  He works on a wide range of projects, focusing on creating sophisticated research solutions and often supplementing them with public facing websites and other marketing collateral.

Justin Biddle

Institution: Swansea University

Occupation: Software Developer

Biography: Justin works as a developer in distributed systems as part of the Swansea University Department of Medicine, and supports work on the DPUK Data Portal.

Stuart Gillespie

Institution: University of Oxford

Occupation: DPUK Senior Communications Manager

Biography: Stuart is Senior Communications Manager at Dementias Platform UK, based in Oxford. He is responsible for overseeing DPUK’s communications activities, including website, social media, publications, events, and media relations. He previously worked in the press office at Oxford University, after an initial career as a newspaper reporter.