CRDC leadership team

Experienced NHS and Academic leaders oversee the CRDC in Edinburgh, supporting and enabling high-quality commercial clinical trials.

Professor Neeraj (Bean) Dhaun

CRF/CRDC Director

  • University of Edinburgh

Contact details

Bean has research interests in the role of the immune system in the development and progression of hypertension, as well as hypertension in the setting of chronic kidney disease. Bean’s research group focuses on the cardiovascular risk associated with the spectrum of chronic kidney disease from early in the disease trajectory through to end-stage renal failure requiring dialysis or kidney transplantation. They perform pre-clinical and clinical pharmacology studies as well as investigating cardiovascular risk at a population level. Their goals are to identify cardiovascular risk early in people with kidney disease and, through experimental medicine studies, to explore novel therapies that might reduce this risk and so potentially improve longer-term outcomes for these people.


  • Kidney disease
  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Experimental medicine 

Dr Corrienne McCulloch

CRF Deputy Director

  • NHS Lothian

Contact details

Dr Rebecca Sutherland

VPAG Lead

  • NHS Lothian
  • Overseeing strategic and operational delivery

Contact details

  • Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Edinburgh
  • CCT in Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, Oxford
  • MRC research fellow in vaccine immunology at the Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford
  • NRS clinical scientist and CRDC Lead, NHS Lothian

  • Optimising antimicrobial therapy for clinical infection
  • Allergy and Infection
  • Vaccination
  • HIV therapeutics and standards of care

  • Site PI for the OvIVA study, Oxford University - National study looking at the role of oral Abs in the treatment of osteomyelitis
  • Site PI for the ChAdOx study, Oxford University - Covid-19 vaccine study
  • Site PI for the ChAdox vaccine (COV002) study and booster study (COV009), Oxford University
  • Site PI for the IONOE study, Oxford University - Academic study of necrotising otitis media abs use and follow-up
  • Site PI for the Next Cove study, Moderna - Phase 3 C-19 mRNA vaccine
  • Site PI for the Odyssey study, Moderna - Phase 1/2 pandemic flu vaccine candidate
  • Site PI for the RIO study, Rockerfellor/Imperial/Oxford - Academic study - functional HIV cure study utilising broadly neutralising Abs IMP
  • Site PI for the SNAP trial - Global Platform trial for the management of Staph Aureus Bacteraemia
  • Site PI for the Fluent study, Moderna - Phase 2 seasonal influenza study

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