Who we are

Project Management Group

Alan Winston

POPPY co-principal investigator, Professor of HIV and Genitourinary Medicine
Alan is a Professor of HIV and Genitourinary Medicine at Imperial College and Consultant Physician at St. Mary’s Hospital, London. His research focuses on non-infectious co-morbidities associated with HIV-disease in the modern antiretroviral era, with a focus on central nervous system complications.

Caroline Sabin

POPPY co-principal investigator, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology
Caroline is a Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at University College London. She has worked for many years on the analysis of large cohort studies of people with HIV with a particular interest in co-morbidity development and adverse events of antiretroviral therapy.

Frank Post

POPPY co-investigator, Professor of HIV Medicine
Frank is a Professor of HIV Medicine at King’s College London and Honorary Consultant Physician at King’s College Hospital. His clinical and research interests include the effects of HIV and antiretroviral therapy on kidney and bone, solid organ transplantation in HIV infection, and mycobacterial infections including multi-drug resistant tuberculosis.

Marta Boffito

POPPY co-investigator, Consultant Physician and Clinical Research Lead
Marta is the Clinical Research Lead and HIV Service Director (Consultant Physician) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and Reader at Imperial College London, London UK. Her research interests are in antiretroviral drug pharmacology, from prevention to treatment, ageing with HIV and understudied populations.

Memory Sachikonye

POPPY HIV Community Liaison Co-ordinator
Memory has been living with HIV since 2002 and is a member of the UK Community Advisory Board (UK-CAB), a national network of HIV treatment advocates within HIV i-Base. She has been working as the POPPY HIV Community Liaison Co-ordinator since the start of the study.

Paddy Mallon

POPPY co-investigator, Professor of Microbial Diseases
Paddy is Professor of Microbial Diseases, and head of the HIV Molecular Research Group at University College Dublin, and Consultant in Infectious Diseases at St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin. His research interests include the toxicities of antiretroviral therapy, cardiovascular disease, and pharmacology of anti-infectives.

Steering group

Alan Winston

POPPY co-principal investigator, Professor of HIV and Genitourinary Medicine

Anton Pozniak

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust

Caroline Sabin

POPPY co-principal investigator, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology

David Asboe

Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Trust

Frank Post

POPPY co-investigator, Professor of HIV Medicine

Ian Williams

Mortimer Market Centre, London

Jaime Vera

Brighton and Sussex Medical School

Jane Anderson

Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Lucy Garvey

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

Margaret Johnson

Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

Marta Boffito

POPPY co-investigator, Consultant Physician and Clinical Research Lead

Memory Sachikonye

POPPY HIV Community Liaison Co-ordinator

Paddy Mallon

POPPY co-investigator, Professor of Microbial Diseases

Support team

Daphne Babalis

Operations Manager, Imperial Clinical Trials Unit
Daphne works as an Operations Manager at the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit (ICTU) and has over 10 years’ experience in managing multi-centre clinical trials in a range of therapeutic areas within academia and the NHS. Daphne oversees management and coordination of the POPPY study.

Davide de Francesco

Medical Statistician
Davide is a medical statistician who was previously working on several studies of HIV and ageing, including the POPPY study. He was successfully awarded his PhD in 2019. Although he has now taken up a new post in the US, he is continuing to write up his POPPY research and we hope to continue to work with Davide in the future.

Hajra Okhai

Research Statistician
Hajra is a research statistician who has been working at UCL since 2018. She has recently embarked on a PhD to study mental health issues, partly based on data from the POPPPY study.

Jodi Meyerowitz

POPPY Trial Manager
Jodi joined our team at the end of 2019 as the POPPY Trial Manager. Jodi has previously worked on several HIV cohort studies (HEATHER, PITCH) and is passionate about HIV research. She is temporarily on maternity leave, following the birth of her second daughter, Alexandra, in November 2020.

Manolis Bagkeris

PhD student and POPPY statistician
Manolis is the POPPY statistician based at UCL and manages the co-ordination of the various POPPY datasets. He has recently submitted his PhD on the topic of HIV, frailty, fractures and falls based on the POPPY dataset.

Margarita Durkina

POPPY Trial Manager (maternity cover)
Margarita is our temporary POPPY Trial Manager, looking after the ropes trial while Jodi is on maternity leave. She has been working in clinical research for 6 years after receiving training in Medical Biochemistry and Clinical Research.

Participating institutions and clinical sites

  • Sponsor: Imperial College London
  • Trials Unit: Imperial Clinical Trials Unit
  • Statistical analysis: University College London
  • Brighton and Sussex University Hospital
  • Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London
  • Homerton Hospital, London
  • King’s College Hospital, London
  • Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin
  • Mortimer Market Centre (UCL), London
  • Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, London
  • St. Mary’s Hospital, London