Scientific Advisers

Toby Maher is a Professor of Medicine and Director of Interstitial Lung Disease at Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles (USC).  Dr Maher has spent the last 18 years specializing in the management of all forms of pulmonary fibrosis and orphan interstitial lung diseases (ILD). He previously ran the ILD unit at Royal Brompton Hospital. Since June 2020 he has been Director of ILD at Keck Medicine of USC. He remains Professor of Interstitial Lung Disease at Imperial College London and is British Lung Foundation Professor of Respiratory Medicine.

Maureen Horton is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Co-Director of the Johns Hopkins Interstitial Lung Disease Clinic.  Her research focuses on deciphering the immunological mechanisms that promote lung inflammation and fibrosis, examining the ability of immunotherapy and immunometabolic therapy to reverse lung inflammation and fibrosis and treat chronic cough in patents suffering with lung fibrosis.

Joanna Porter is a Professor in the Department of Medicine at UCL and a Consultant in Respiratory and General Medicine. She is the Clinical Lead for Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) at UCLH and Medical Director of the UCL partners ILD Consortium, and of the Breathing Matters Charity for patients with ILD.

Joanna studied Medicine and Pharmacology at Cambridge University followed by clinical studies at Oxford University Medical School.  She went on to train in respiratory and intensive care medicine at the Brompton, St George’s, and St Thomas’  hospitals, before completing her respiratory training at UCLH.  Joanna was awarded a PhD for her work in inflammation at UCL as an MRC Clinical Fellow and went on to be awarded a Wellcome Postdoctoral Clinical Fellowship at UCL.

Her research is in the area of inflammatory lung disease; she heads the Leukocyte Trafficking Laboratory at UCL in the Centre for Inflammation and Tissue Repair (CITR) and has a translational research interest in novel imaging techniques, biomarkers and therapies in ILD and other inflammatory lung diseases

Surinder Birring is Professor of Respiratory Medicine and Consultant Respiratory Physician at King’s College Hospital, London (specialist clinics in ILD, Cough and Sarcoidosis). His research focuses on the assessment and treatment of cough and the development of disease specific quality of life measures. As a British Lung Foundation Fellow in 2001, he studied the cellular mechanisms of unexplained cough and continued his work as a Senior Fellow in Sydney in 2006. He has published over 200 papers, reviews and book chapters and is author of American, British and European Cough clinical guidelines. He has been the chief investigator of numerous multi-centre clinical trials. His team developed the widely used quality of life questionnaires, Leicester Cough Questionnaire, King’s Brief Interstitial Lung Disease (KBILD) and King’s Sarcoidosis Questionnaires (KSQ). Dr Birring is also co-developer of the Leicester Cough Monitor.

Chris Denton is a Professor in experimental rheumatology at UCL Medical School and Joint Director of the Centre for Rheumatology, Royal Free Hospital, London. He runs the largest scleroderma service in the UK with more than 1000 scleroderma patients and has published extensively on laboratory and clinical aspects of Raynaud’s phenomenon, connective tissue disease and pulmonary hypertension

Gerry Coghlan is a cardiologist and leads the national pulmonary hypertension service at Royal Free Hospital. He is a founding member and ex-chair of the National Pulmonary Hypertension Physicians Association and has developed the Royal Free National Pulmonary Hypertension Service, with a particular interest in connective tissue disease associated pulmonary hypertension.