The Make it Public group

Matt Westmore is the Chief Executive of the Health Research Authority and co-chair of the campaign group. He has a background in research funding, policy and practice. He was previously a professor of enterprise with a focus on improving the relevance, transparency and quality of research at the University of Southampton and remains an adjunct Professor.

Matt has held roles with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) including as an executive director of the Evaluation Trials and Studies Coordinating Centre (NETSCC). He was also Interim Director of INVOLVE .

Matt has also worked internationally to help improve research funding practice around the world; this included being a founding member of the Ensuring Value in Research funders’ forum.

Derek Stewart is involved with research projects mainly in Ireland with the Health Research Board - Trials Methodology Research Network and Evidence Synthesis Ireland as a Strategic Advisor and is co-chair of the Make it Public campaign group.

Derek was treated successfully for throat cancer in 1995. A former teacher, Derek worked with young people experiencing difficulties in education in Glasgow then Nottinghamshire where he now lives. He subsequently became actively involved in numerous aspects of patient involvement and advocacy at a local, national and international level being the founder Chair of the Consumer Liaison Group for the National Cancer Research Institute.

In 2020 Derek was appointed Honorary Professor at National University of Ireland, Galway and in 2022 he joined the board of ISRCTN Registry.

Kieran Prior is currently Research Programme Manager in the Clinical Research team at Cancer Research UK (CRUK), where he is working with the CRUK CTU Network and the wider CRUK clinical research community to encourage and facilitate transparency in trials. As the UK's largest funder of academic clinical studies on cancer, CRUK is committed to ensuring our trials are registered and the results appropriately reported, so researchers and patients can gain the greatest possible insight from data generated – and maximise benefit for people affected by cancer.

Amander Wellings is a neuro-diverse, lifelong family carer/service user, with wide experience of health and social care. She is a self employed patient and public involvement (PPI) consultant.

Amander holds an MA in Medical Sociology from the University of East Anglia and is a founding member of the Patient and Public Involvement in Research (PPIRes) Norfolk PPI group. She is alumni of the NIHR INVOLVE advisory group writing national PPI guidance and advising on PPI strategies. Amander has commented on numerous study designs, creating and co facilitating training, management, and steering groups, she has accumulated a vast 20 year experience in patient and public involvement.

Frances Mossie has been a Patient Research Ambassador/Champion (PRA/C) with Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust for 7 years. Prior to retirement she held a role with Kent and Medway CRN as a Research Administrator and previously worked in NHS finance and clinic administration.

Frances has worked with the NIHR Patient and Public Involvement Team on Urgent Public Health Review Studies and has also been reviewing Patient Information Sheets for MTW-designed studies.

In April 2020 Frances was awarded the Patient Research Ambassador/Research Champion Individual Impact Award by the Kent, Surrey, Sussex Clinical Research Network (KSS CRN) together with a Team Award to the MTW Research and Development department. She has started her own study and is now working with a team looking at the experiences and the perceived impact of the NIHR Research Ambassador Initiative within the local region.

On a personal basis Frances is now healthy after being treated for cancer twice.

Catriona Manville is Director of Research Policy at the Association of Medical Research Charities. Catriona leads on responsible research funding and AMRC’s policy work to influence and improve the research and funding landscape in universities and the NHS, and to build networks across government and the life sciences sector. Within this remit, she champions the AMRC’s work on research transparency and patient and public involvement and engagement in research.

Before joining AMRC, Catriona was a research leader at RAND Europe, led a large portfolio of research evaluation and research into societal impact, with a particular focus on evaluating national assessment systems. During this time, Catriona was seconded to the Department of Health and Social Care and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

Georgina is an experienced scientist with a commitment to maximising the benefits from research data. After living and working in east Africa, she worked for many years on infectious diseases in the Oxford Centre for Tropical Medicine, combining and analysing clinical trial data to detect early signs of antimalarial drug resistance.

In 2018 she moved to research funding at Wellcome where she led the development and implementation of Wellcome’s clinical trial and data sharing policies, including transparency of results reporting and encouraging data sharing and re-use. She then worked at Health Data Research UK, the national institute for health data science.

Georgina now supports a range of projects through her consultancy work including; the World Health Organization (WHO) Antimicrobial Resistance Division, acting as the Secretariat for an Independent Review Panel for two clinical data sharing platforms (Vivli and CSDR), associate work with Research Consulting to enable universities and funders to improve their research data management.

Georgina was a Board Director of the UK clinical trial registry (ISRCTN) 2019-2024, and a member of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Grants and Awards Committee since 2022.

Georgina is also an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford.