Mr Bilal Alkhaffaf is a consultant surgeon at Salford Royal Hospital where he specialises in the management of oesophageal and gastric cancer, obesity, and benign upper gastrointestinal disease. His clinical interests lie in advanced minimally invasive surgery including totally minimally invasive oesophagectomy, gastrectomy and revisional bariatric and benign surgery. Bilal has also held the position of Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Division of Cancer Sciences, University of Manchester since 2015. His research portfolio focuses on outcome reporting, and includes a NIHR-funded international study which he led to standardise the reporting of outcomes in surgical trials for gastric cancer. Bilal’s work in this area continues through national and international collaborations and the supervision of PhD students and trainees. In his role as research lead at Salford Royal Hospital’s Upper GI Unit, he has facilitated the delivery of numerous national and international multi-centre studies. Bilal’s teaching roles extend to the training and supervision of undergraduate and postgraduate doctors and allied health professionals. He is Deputy Directory and a Unit Lead of the ‘Transformative Oncology’ master’s programme at the University of Manchester. Bilal also founded and leads an international Senior Clinical Fellowship programme in oesophago-gastric surgery.

Consultant Neurosurgeon Mr Pietro D’Urso provides specialist care at Salford Royal for patients with benign and malignant brain tumours, as well as neurosurgical procedures in trauma patients and general neurosurgical conditions including hydrocephalus and degenerative spine disease. He specialises in awake craniotomies with brain mapping, brain tumour resections with fluorescence and intraoperative ultrasounds techniques, intraoperative neurophysiology monitoring, neuro-navigation, minimally invasive cranial surgery, cranial endoscopy and keyhole surgery. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England and is involved in training and teaching upcoming neurosurgeons. He is also actively involved in research to advance care and treatment options for brain tumour patients and has published extensively in leading medical journals. He is privileged to be part of a fantastic neurosciences team and attributes this successful appointment to team work.

Dr Adrian Heald is a Consultant Physician in Diabetes and Endocrinology at Salford Royal, a Research Fellow at The University of Manchester and a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford. He is highly active in research, with interests including the impact of insulin resistance and the insulin-like growth factor system on diabetes and coronary disease risk. He has also published on digital care, long Covid, bariatric surgery and mental health issues – he is a member of both the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the Royal College of Physicians. He is Chief Investigator for an NCA-sponsored feasibility study looking at a self-help intervention to reduce fatigue-related symptoms among long Covid patients in general practice.

Peter Paine was appointed as a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Salford Royal in 2009 and has previously served as gastro clinical lead, gastro clinical governance lead and clinical lead for nutrition. His doctoral research explored psychophysiological mechanisms in visceral and somatic pain, leading to publications for which he appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research under “nominative determinism” (Paine on pain in Pain). He runs a tertiary regional neurogastroenterology and motility (NGM) clinic with a particular interest in chronic abdominal pain, severe dysmotility and their interface with nutrition. He has served as the chair of the NGM section of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG), and co-first authored the BSG international guidelines on the management of functional dyspepsia, irritable bowel syndrome, and has also co-authored guidelines on the management of adult patients with severe chronic small intestinal dysmotility and also hypermobility syndromes. He has published the world’s largest case-series to date of patients with the rare centrally mediated abdominal pain syndrome. He is currently leading a study of a novel investigation exploring small bowel feeding symptom intolerance in adults and participating in the FRONTIER NGM research collaborative. He regularly lectures on NGM nationally and internationally and also continues to support undergraduate education as an academic advisor and clinical placement supervisor.

Dr Dimitrios Poulikakos is a Consultant Renal Physician, Clinical Director for the Department of Renal Medicine at Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Director/ Co-Chair of the NHSE North West Kidney Network. He has been Honorary Senior Lecturer in Cardiovascular Sciences at The University of Manchester since 2019 and his research interests include chronic kidney disease (CKD), cardiovascular disease in CKD, acute kidney injury, vaccination in dialysis and renal transplant patients, and health inequalities in CKD. He has been a champion of the Sister Renal Centre scheme of the International Society of Nephrology, which pairs existing centres of excellence like Salford Royal renal department with renal units in low and middle-income countries that need extra resources and training.

Mr Javed Sultan was trained in Newcastle upon Tyne by Professor Griffin OBE and the team till 2013. During this time he was awarded the Gold Medal for the Intercollegiate Speciality Examination in General Surgery. He developed a passion for prehabilitation and enhanced recovery, following five years at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, an internationally recognised unit. Then he moved to the Salford Royal hospital. Subsequently he became Unit Clinical Lead, GM Cancer Lead for OG cancer. Last year he was appointed as OG Lead for the Association of Upper Gastrointestinal Surgeons (AUGIS) and as National Clinical Lead for upper GI cancer by NHS England. Javed’s aims are to improve the complex 62-day OG pathway, reduce treatment variations within the UK and improve outcomes. Leadership is a passion of his, but he also has an academic interest in prehabilitation. He is currently leading a research programme with Manchester Metropolitan University and Southampton. This is investigating the mechanistic effects of resistance and hypoxic altitude training on sarcopenia, muscle, function, mitochondria and the tumour microenvironment in OG cancer. He has been awarded a grant of £250K to fund a feasibility randomised controlled trial investigating the different exercise regimes.