Meet the ACRC Team
The Advanced Care Research Centre Director is Bruce Guthrie, Professor of General Practice. He is joined by colleagues from across the University of Edinburgh and Newcastle University, bringing together top academics across all aspects of caring for those in later life.
Core Leadership
Director - Professor Bruce Guthrie
Bruce Guthrie is Professor of General Practice at the Usher Institute, in the Edinburgh Medical School.
Bruce is a mixed methods health services researcher with an interest in the quality and safety of health and social care, particularly in relation to multimorbidity and polypharmacy. As well as research, he works clinically as a GP and works closely with the NHS and government to improve healthcare quality and safety.
Academy Director - Professor Ian Underwood
Ian Underwood is Professor of Electronic Displays in the School of Engineering where he is Deputy Director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Sensing and Measurement, reflecting his current research focus on miniature sensor systems in a range of applications including biomedical and healthcare.
Academic Lead - Professor Heather Wilkinson
Heather Wilkinson is Professor of Dementia Practice and Participation and the director of the Edinburgh Centre for Research on the Experience of Dementia. She has a longstanding involvement in qualitative dementia research and activism and is also a trainee psychotherapist.
Academic Lead - Dr Jacques Fleuriot
Jacques Fleuriot is the Director of the Artificial Intelligence and its Application in the School of Informatics. His research focuses on AI modelling, which spans areas such as formal verification, process modelling, and explainable AI in healthcare and other complex domains.
Academic Lead - Professor Stewart Mercer
Stewart Mercer is a General Practitioner, Professor of Primary Care and Multimorbidity and Director of the Scottish School of Primary Care. His research focuses on understanding and responding to the needs of people with multiple complex conditions.
Programme Manager - Lucy McCloughan
Lucy McCloughan is the Programme Manager for ACRC having previously managed Health Data Research Scotland from 2018 and Farr Scotland from 2017. From 2012 she was eHealth Research Manager at the University of Edinburgh Medical School overseeing a programme of randomised controlled trials and qualitative studies investigating telemetric self-monitoring of long term health conditions along with a programme investigating ePrescribing systems in English hospitals. Prior to that she managed the Scottish Mental Health Research Network from 2007-2009 and the Scottish Primary Care Research Network from 2002-2007. Before moving into research management, she was on the “coal face” as a researcher working with people with visual disabilities, working at the Oxford Eye Hospital and the Princess Alexandra Eye Hospital in Edinburgh.
Academy Project Manager - Kate Morris
Kate Morris is the Project Manager for the ACRC Academy. Prior to this, she was Project Manager for ThermaSMART, an international research project with 18 partners on five continents. She also worked as Project Manager on the teaching response to Covid in the School of Engineering. She has a background in publishing, where she was a non-fiction editor for firms including HarperCollins and Bloomsbury, and was Publications Manager for the Basic Skills Agency, a national educational charity.
Wide-ranging expertise
The University of Edinburgh has a rich expertise working on issues related to the ageing population, and the challenges this brings both at home and globally.
In addition to the Core Leadership team noted above, the Advanced Care Research Centre is bringing together expertise from across all three Colleges of the University of Edinburgh joined by colleagues from Newcastle University, combining research across fields including medicine and other care professions, life sciences, engineering, informatics, data and social sciences - with the person in later life at the heart of all we do.