CMVM Research Office
We support the CMVM Dean of Research and Registrar and play a major strategic role in developing research, supporting staff and ensuring that CMVM strategy and environment support the highest levels of research excellence and integrity.
Our aim is to support the CMVM research community to deliver the best outcomes, always exercising integrity, inclusion, respect and transparency.
Each team member has their own areas of focus to support College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine (CMVM) research, as described below. Please contact us to find out more or if you think we can help you with something.
Jennifer Cusiter - Head of CMVM Research Office
Jen is the Head of the CMVM Research Office and works with a variety of CMVM stakeholders to develop and implement approaches that enable CMVM researchers to undertake world-leading research at the highest levels of integrity and ethics.
She helps to coordinate CMVM research portfolio development; is a member of the University Research Strategy Group; and also coordinates the CMVM Research Committee. Jen works closely with the CMVM research managers, providing expertise on the funding landscape and relevant opportunities. Jen was involved in the REF2021 submission.
She is a member of the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA).
Rhona Brown - Executive Officer to CMVM Dean of Research and Research Office
Rhona delivers a range of confidential, organisational, project and management support to the College, and also supports the CMVM Dean of Research, Professor Stuart Forbes, with the varied portfolio of academic and public roles and responsibilities. Other duties include supporting the Dean with the coordination of the College’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) which is the UK’s system for assessing the quality of research in higher education institutions and as such the submission is a significant administrative task for the College.
Lorraine Jackson - Research Support Officer
Lorraine coordinates funds and initiatives within the CMVM designed to enable and incentivise translational research and industry collaborations. She provides support to the MRC Confidence in Concept Programme, which is a College translational fund that supports early stage translational projects to a point where the project is competitive for further substantive funding or industrial partnership. She works closely with Edinburgh Innovations to ensure synergy between all CMVM translational funds. She also manages the UoE/Wellcome Institutional Strategic Support Fund (ISSF) which covers eight strategic areas from supporting early career researchers and interdisciplinary projects to public engagement and open research.
Lorraine provides administrative support to the CMVM Translation and Commercialisation Board which was formed in 2018 to help maximise impact that CMVM research and teaching has upon society by increasing the quantity and quality of translation and commercialisation opportunities across CMVM. She supports early career researchers via the Research Staff Committee and the Edinburgh Scientific Academic Track (ESAT) programme. Lorraine was also involved in the 2021 REF submission and is currently working on the next REF cycle.
She is an ARMA member.
Alíz Owolabi – Research Support Coordinator
Alíz’s main focus is being the CMVM lead for demand management. She works with Edinburgh Research Office (ERO) to coordinate internal selection panels for grant funding bids for which funders only accept a restricted number of applications per institution.
Alíz is also responsible for establishing and maintaining a SharePoint site for the CMVM Research Office and signposting researchers to relevant funding schemes. She sits on the CMVM Strategic Opportunities Group, which works on identifying competitive funding bids and disseminating these effectively to CMVM researchers.
In addition, Alíz provides administrative support to the CMVM Research Computing Group and contributes to events management in the College.
She is a member of ARMA.
Anna Krzak - Research Information Manager & Open Research Coordinator
Anna is the CMVM strategic administrative lead for Open Research with a particular focus on driving good research culture, working alongside other key College and University stakeholders.
She drives the implementation and evaluation of a number of Open Access (OA) policies within CMVM, including the REF and funders' OA policies, whilst leading a large CMVM OA support network. This involves providing specialist advice on regulatory and policy frameworks to both academic and professional services staff, monitoring risks and employing relevant response, as well as developing and implementing new approaches, guidelines and workflows.
Together with Lorraine, Anna also provides support for the Edinburgh Scientific Academic Track (ESAT) programme. She was involved in the REF2021 submission and sat on the University’s REF Advisory Group and the Responsible Research Metrics Working Group.
Anna is an active member of the Research Cultures Working Group which works on behalf of the Research Strategy Group to establish policies and mechanisms to promote positive research cultures at the University of Edinburgh.
Anna is co-Chair of the University's Research Outputs Network (RON) and organiser of the Research Culture forum for the Research Managers. She is also an active member of the Pure User Group and ARMA.
Ismar Haga - Strategic Research Coordinator
Ismar is the CMVM Research Office Lead for our clinical research portfolio. He coordinates the Clinical Trials Oversight Group, which supports locally sponsored clinical trials and ensures the academic and financial sustainability of the clinical trials pipeline. The group includes representatives of the Academic and Clinical Central Office for Research and Development (ACCORD), CMVM Research Office, Edinburgh Clinical Research Facility (CRF), Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit (ECTU), and Edinburgh Research Office (ERO).
He is also the Administrative Lead of the CMVM Core Facilities Group, which congregates facility managers and technologists across the college to coordinate, share information and best practices, and identify and address common issues.
Alongside Lena, Ismar is involved in the implementation of the CMVM Impact Strategy and in the overall promotion of an impact culture across the college.
Ismar is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and member of the University of Edinburgh Staff Pride Network, the Microbiology Society and ARMA.
Róisín McKelvey - Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Officer
Róisín works closely with the College EDI Lead and coordinates College-level EDI projects and also engages with local EDI teams across the CMVM Deaneries.
Róisín’s role addresses both policy and practice; she supports the ongoing strategic development and implementation of the College EDI Action Plan, and the delivery of EDI initiatives for staff and students. As a member of the CMVM EDI Committee, she fulfils organisational responsibilities, monitors Committee actions and facilitates short-term task-groups addressing specific EDI issues at the University.
Community building is a highly valued aspect of Róisín’s work, and so she is embedded within the wider, interdisciplinary EDI community. In addition to collaborating with EDI colleagues across the Colleges, she is the CMVM representative on the University’s LGBT+ Equality Sub-committee and she participates in a range of staff networks. These include the University Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-committee, the Staff Pride Network, the Research Cultures Forum and the Edinburgh Race Equality Network, in which she holds the Network Liaison committee position.
Sarah Atkins - Research Ethics & Integrity Administrator
Sarah provides administrative support to CMVM Medical School and Research Office with research ethics processes, including the triaging of application forms and sending applications for review. She is the main point of contact for the Edinburgh Medical School Research Ethics Committee (EMREC), handling applications and general enquiries, and provides secretarial support such as organising committee meetings, compiling reports for audit and maintaining membership records.
She liaises with other University RECs, the Research Governance office, Data Protection office, Edinburgh Research Office and other research governance and sponsorship bodies to support researchers applying for ethics approval.
Shay Redgate - Research Information Administrator
Shay is responsible for maintenance and quality control of CMVM’s research output records in Pure, the University’s Current Research Information System (CRIS), to support access to and discovery of CMVM research, and ensure compliance with funder and REF open access requirements and the University’s publications policy.
Shay is the college’s main point of contact for administrative queries regarding open access processes, including compliance with open access policies, and works with centre administrative staff to provide timely open access to CMVM-authored research.
Ellen MacRae - Strategic Project Support Officer - Global Health
Ellen is working to provide strategic project support for the development and implementation of a College-wide strategic plan for Global Health research that is integrated across the wider University of Edinburgh. Her main aim is to summarise the CMVM’s key strengths and opportunities, and develop and articulate recommendations to align the college’s, and the University’s, Global Health research with the national and international funding and policy agenda.
She also provides administrative support for the CMVM International Committee, chaired by Rebecca Reynolds, and the Eurolife Network of European Universities in Life Science.
Andrew McBride – Translational Project Manager
Andrew is responsible for the management of the CMVM MRC Confidence in Concept fund. This fund supports early translation of biomedical and interdisciplinary research to initiate the development of new innovations in healthcare and wellbeing. Working closing with Translational Projects Officer, he manages funding calls and activities with the aim of both widening researcher participation and the diversity of translational opportunities that are competitive for onward development and investment. Andrew supports researchers in developing funding proposals, project plans and collaborative links with key expertise and capabilities including industrial, clinical and regulatory partners. He manages the portfolio of live projects, providing ongoing project management support to maximise innovative and impactful outcomes from our translational research community.
Andrew is a member of the CMVM Translation and Commercialisation Board.
Translational Project Manager is a part-time role with Andrew spending the remainder of his time in the role of Entrepreneur in Residence with Edinburgh Innovations. This provides a key linkage in translational activity between CMVM and Edinburgh Innovations.
Lena Lorenz - CMVM Research Impact Manager
Lena is one of three University of Edinburgh Research Impact Managers within the Edinburgh Research Office Engagement and Impact team. She is responsible for driving the development of a CMVM Research Impact Strategy to effect structural and cultural change and to support researchers to maximise their research impact. She is working with research managers, academics and clinicians across the College to identify research with societal impact.
Lena is organiser of the lunchtime biography series of the Edinburgh Race Equality Network, and member of the Research Impact Network and ARMA.