Central Trial Team

Professor Edward Carlton, Chief Investigator
North Bristol NHS Trust
Edd is an Academic Emergency Clinician at North Bristol NHS Trust. He is a current NIHR Advanced Fellow and Professor for the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. His research interests are around diagnostics in chest pain, and pragmatic trials in hard to recruit populations.

Dr Fergus Hamilton, Co-Chief Investigator
University of Bristol
Fergus Hamilton is an NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Aetiological Epidemiology and co-lead of the DEXACELL trial. He is a trainee in Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases with an interest in skin and soft tissue infection and adjunctive therapies in infection.

Katie Joyce, Trial Manager
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit, University of Exeter
Katie joined the Exeter Clinical Trials Unit in January 2024 to take on the role of Trial Manager for DEXACELL. Katie has previous experience in managing clinical trials across various clinical specialties at Bristol Trials Centre. This has included cardiac surgery, vaccine and cancer trials

Heather Mclachlan, Lead Research Nurse
North Bristol NHS Trust.
With a background as an intensive care nurse, Heather has experience in delivering research in emergency care, trauma, critical care, anaesthetics, neurosurgery, and stroke research. Heather has also worked as an educator in an early-phase clinical research facility. 

Hazel Taylor, Senior Statistician
Centre for Trials Research, Cardiff University
Hazel is the senior non-blinded statistician for DEXACELL. Prior to joining Cardiff in June 24, Hazel worked as a statistician at the University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust, partly working for the NIHR Research Design Service and partly on funded studies and clinical trials, including the “Adjunctive Clindamycin For Cellulitis” trial.

Phoebe Dawe, Data Specialist
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit, University of Exeter
Phoebe has been working at the Exeter clinical trials unit since October 2020. She started as a data manager and is now a data specialist. She will be carrying out the database build on DEXACELL and will then support with the data management activities going forward. She has previous database build and data management experience on a number of other clinical trials, including COVID, cardiac, mental health and geriatric related trials.

James Connors, Statistician
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit, University of Exeter
James joined ExeCTU in October 2022 following a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Reading and an MSc in Statistics from the University of Southampton. As the Trial Statistician, James will undertake the final analysis of the DEXACELL data. Throughout the trial, he is also involved in the day-to-day statistical input and monitoring to ensure that the data that comes out of the trial will answer the important research questions at the end.

Rebecca Lear, Trial Coordinator
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit, University of Exeter
Rebecca Joined the ExeCTU in January 2024 following completion of her PhD in Physical Activity and Public Health. Rebecca has 4 years experience at the Royal Devon University Hospital working as a Clinical Research Practitioner, running many different research studies covering neurology, dermatology, physiotherapy and Covid-19.