SPEAKERS 2020 (2021 COMING SOON)

Professor Agrawal is a Consultant in Respiratory and Intensive Care Medicine at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL), National Clinical Advisor for tobacco dependency to NHS England & Improvement and Chairs the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) tobacco advisory group. With others he helped develop the British Thoracic Society (BTS) National Tobacco audit in Secondary Care , the BTS tobacco dependency Quality Improvement tool and delivered an RCP  ‘Breakthrough Collaborative’ focussed on treating tobacco dependency. Professor Agrawal co-edited the RCP report published in 2018 ‘Hiding in plain sight: treating tobacco dependency in the NHS’ that made the case for systematic treatment of tobacco dependency in the NHS.

Dr. Ahluwalia is a physician and public health scientist at Brown University’s Schools of Public Health and Medicine. He has been in academic medicine since 1992 and has been a practicing physician, faculty member, department chair, Associate Dean and Center Director in medical schools, and School of Public Health Dean. His primary research areas are health disparities and smoking cessation and nicotine addiction in African-American smokers. He has been continuously funded by NIH for 25 years and has published more than 350 manuscripts. Ahluwalia has served on the U.S. government’s National Advisory Council on Minority Health and Health Disparities, on the SRNT Board of Directors, and is currently appointed to the federal government’s Interagency Committee on Smoking and Health chaired by the US Surgeon General. Dr. Ahluwalia trained at NYU, received a MD and MPH at Tulane University, a Medicine residency at UNC Chapel Hill, and a clinical epidemiology fellowship at Harvard Medical School, where he received a masters degree in health policy.

Deborah Arnott is a recognised international expert on tobacco control and the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, with a particular interest in nicotine regulation and harm reduction. She was a member of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence committee which developed guidance for England on tobacco harm reduction and of an expert advisory group to the UK’s medicines regulator the MHRA on e-cigarettes.  She also has experience of product regulation under the EU General Product Safety Directive having participated in the development of fire safety requirements for cigarettes. Deborah has an MBA from Cranfield, is an honorary Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, and a member of the Royal College of Physicians Tobacco Advisory Group.  She was awarded the Alwyn Smith prize in 2007 by the Faculty of Public Health for her outstanding contribution to public health. Competing Interest: None Stated

Clive Bates has had a diverse career in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.  He started out with the IT company, IBM, then switched career to work in the environment movement. From 1997-2003 he was Director of Action on Smoking and Health (UK), campaigning to reduce the harms caused by tobacco. In 2003 he joined Prime Minister Blair’s Strategy Unit as a civil servant and worked in senior roles in the public sector and for the United Nations in Sudan. He is now Director of Counterfactual, a consulting and advocacy practice focussed on a pragmatic approach to sustainability and public health.

Robert Beaglehole is an independent public health physician with a longstanding interest in the prevention and management of chronic diseases. He was professor of public health at the University of Auckland before taking up a position at WHO, Geneva where he became the Director of the Department of Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion before returning to New Zealand. In 1982 he established ASH (NZ) and now Chairs the ASH Board.

Alan Boobis is emeritus Professor of Toxicology, Imperial College London. He retired from his chair at the College in June 2017, after over 40 years.  His main research interests lie in mechanistic toxicology, mode of action and chemical risk assessment.  He has published over 250 original research papers (H-factor 80).  He is or has been a member of several national and international advisory committees; including current chair of the UK Committee on Toxicity, member of the WHO Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation (TobReg), FAO/WHO JECFA (veterinary residues) and FAO/WHO JMPR (pesticide residues). He is a fellow of several learned societies and has received a number of awards, including Officer of the British Empire (OBE).

Nicky has worked in stop smoking in a variety of guises since 2006, first as an HCA in a GP practice, followed by a locum advisor for pharmacy in Ealing, then into Public Health as part of a specialist team in Harrow.  She is now the Service Lead and Specialist for the London Borough of Barnet. Her role consists of performance management of commissioned service providers in the borough (GP and Pharmacy), clinical lead for the borough (including training) and running  face to face (in normal times) and telephone support clinics (1:1) for the following:

• complex/high risk co-morbid
• pregnancy cohort
• and other highly dependent tobacco users (including those living with poor mental health).

Dr Sharon Cox is a Senior Research Fellow within the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group at University College London. Collectively she has over 15 years' experience within substance use treatment and research. Her research focuses on tobacco dependence amongst people living with severe, and often unchanging, health and social needs. She has a special interest in tobacco harm reduction, specifically investigating how quitting smoking using an e-cigarette can improve health outcomes and quality of life in people experiencing homelessness.

Cliff Douglas is the Director of the University of Michigan Tobacco Research Network, an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health, and a co-principal investigator for the Center for the Assessment of Tobacco Regulations at the University of Michigan. He was the American Cancer Society’s Vice President for Tobacco Control from 2015 to 2020, where he led the development of a comprehensive new public health approach to tobacco control, set forth in the American Cancer Society Public Health Statement on Ending Combustible Tobacco Use in the United States (2018), and co-founded the National Partnership on Behavioral Health and Tobacco Use, which is dedicated to increasing cessation and reducing mortality and illness in smokers with mental health conditions. He also provided expertise on issues related to the changing tobacco product marketplace and guided ACS’s efforts to educate the public about the impact of smoking on COVID-19. Previously, he served as a policy advisor for the Assistant Secretary for Health and the U.S. Surgeon General in the Obama administration, where he was a lead author of the Tobacco Control Strategic Action Plan for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Earlier in his career, he coordinated the successful national campaign to make all commercial airline flights smoke-free and participated as an attorney and public health expert in the litigation that resulted in adoption of the Master Settlement Agreement. As special counsel for Congressman Martin Meehan and the Congressional Task Force on Tobacco and Health in the U.S. House of Representatives, he wrote legislation and prepared the 111-page prosecution memorandum that persuaded the U.S. Attorney General to launch a criminal investigation into the tobacco industry and later file the Justice Department’s landmark racketeering (RICO) action against the major tobacco companies. As told in Civil Warriors: The Legal Siege on the Tobacco Industry, Mr. Douglas also helped tobacco industry whistleblowers go public, and initiated an ABC News expose on the tobacco companies’ engineering of their products to cause dependency that led the Food and Drug Administration to open a two-year investigation and regulate tobacco for health and safety for the first time.

Professor Jacob George is Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Therapeutics and R&D Director for the East of Scotland NRS Node. He is Director of the Tayside Medical Sciences Centre (TASC - https://www.ahspartnership.org.uk/tasc ). Professionally, he is a Consultant Physician in qualified in Clinical Pharmacology and General Internal Medicine and is an accredited European Hypertension Specialist. His clinical interest is in managing patients with high Cardiovascular risk. His research interests are focused on reducing cardiovascular risk factors. His research publications have been covered by more than 500 news organizations worldwide and he has conducted more than 80 media interviews including live television broadcasts to national and international media on the results of his research.  

Dr. Glynn is, from 2014 to the present, Adjunct Lecturer, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine and Executive Team Member, Mayo Clinic Global Bridges Initiative. From 1998 to 2014, he was Director, Cancer Science and Trends and Director, International Cancer Control at the American Cancer Society (ACS). Prior to the ACS, Dr. Glynn was, from 1991 to 1994, Associate Director of the U.S. National Cancer Institute's (NCI) Cancer Control Science Program and, from 1991 to 1998, Chief of the NCI's Cancer Control Extramural Research Branch. From 1983 to 1991, he was Research Director for the NCI's Smoking, Tobacco, and Cancer Program and from 1978 to 1983, he was a Research Psychologist at the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Glynn has published widely on cancer and tobacco use prevention and control, both in the scientific literature and for consumer, professional, and patient education. In addition to his work at the ACS and NCI, he has served as a consultant on cancer control and tobacco issues to such groups as the National Academy of Sciences/Institute of Medicine, the National Research Council, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the WHO, a variety of pharmaceutical organizations, and national, state and local governments. He has also served as a Senior Scientific Reviewer for the U.S. Surgeon General's Reports on Tobacco and Health, as Director of the World Health Organization Study of Health, Economic, and Policy Implications of Tobacco Growth and Consumption in Developing Countries, and has been active in tobacco control programs in Eastern Europe, Central America, and India. He is a Fellow of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and his awards include the U.S. National Institutes of Health Merit Award, the Polish Ministry of Health Service Award, the Guatemala National Council for Tobacco Prevention and Control Meritorious Service Award, the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco John Slade Award, and the American Society of Preventive Oncology Joseph W. Cullen Memorial Award.

Peter Hajek is Professor of Clinical Psychology and Director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine, Queen Mary University of London. His research is concerned primarily with understanding health behaviours, and developing and evaluating both behavioural and pharmacological treatments for dependent smokers and for people with weight problems. Professor Hajek is a member of a number of expert groups, advisory bodies and editorial boards, and has authored or co-authored over 350 publications.

Wayne Hall is an Emeritus Professor at the National Centre for Youth Substance Use Research at the University of Queensland and the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences. He was: a Professor at the National Addiction Centre, Kings College London (2014-2019) and a Visiting Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2012-2021). He has advised the World Health Organization on the health effects of cannabis use; the effectiveness of drug substitution treatment; the contribution of illicit drug use to the global burden of disease; and the ethical implications of genetic and neuroscience research on addiction.

Jamie Hartmann-Boyce is a senior research fellow and departmental lecturer with the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford. Her particular interests lie in evidence synthesis (both quantitative and qualitative) and the communication of complex information and data to inform policy and public action. Her research mainly consists of complex evidence synthesis work. She leads the Cochrane review of electronic cigarettes for smoking cessation, which is now a living review funded by Cancer Research UK, updated monthly, and is an editor for the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group.  

Dorothy K. Hatsukami, Ph.D. is the Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Forster Family Chair in Cancer Prevention and Associate Director of Cancer Prevention and Control of the Masonic Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota.   Her areas of expertise include nicotine addiction and its treatment and tobacco regulatory science assessing the toxicity, appeal and addictiveness of various tobacco products.  She has over 450 peer reviewed publications and has received a number of awards for her work.  She has served on numerous scientific advisory boards or councils for the U.S. government including the FDA Tobacco Product Scientific Advisory Committee s.  She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Study Group on Tobacco Product Regulation.  She served as president of two scientific organizations, the College on Problems of Drug Dependence and the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco.

Richard Holley is the Area Manager for the Northamptonshire Stop Smoking Service, and Tobacco Control lead for Public Health Northamptonshire. In February of this year, Richard and his team added e-cigarettes to the list of products they provide to Northamptonshire smokers looking to quit smoking. A keen harm reduction advocate, Richard has included vaping in several different pieces of work so far this year, including an innovative workplace vaping project which aims to encourage routine and manual workers to switch to e-cigarettes.

Martin Jarvis is Emeritus Professor of Health Psychology at the Department of Behavioural Science & Health, University College London. He has been researching tobacco and nicotine use for the past 40 years. He has served as a trustee of ASH, was Chair of the UK government’s Technical Advisory Group on Tobacco and Health, and was Specialist Adviser to the House of Commons Health Committee’s inquiries into tobacco and health and into smoking in public places.  He was for some years a member of the World Health Organisation’s study group on Tobacco Product Regulation. With colleagues Robert West and Jamie Brown he has recently published a paper on the youth vaping “epidemic” in the USA : Jarvis MJ, West R, Brown J. Epidemic of youth nicotine addiction? What does the National Youth Tobacco Survey reveal about high school e-cigarette use in the USA?

Dr. Karl E. Lund is senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. He was Research Director at the Norwegian Institute for Alcohol and Drug Research for the period 2006-2018. He has been involved in tobacco control work since the mid-1980s, and received the Norwegian Medical Association’s Award in preventive medicine in 2000. Dr. Lund has been a member of several expert committees including WHO’s International Agency for Cancer Research (IARC). He is Associate Editor in Nicotine & Tobacco Research and a Senior Associate Editor of Tobacco Regulatory Science. He has been an expert witness in several lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Dr. Lund holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from 1996 and he was formally assessed with qualifications as Professor in 2009.

Ann McNeill is a Professor of Addictions in the National Addiction Centre with a focus on tobacco. She graduated from the University of Nottingham with a first class joint honours degree in zoology and psychology and then carried out her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry focusing on the development of dependence on smoking. Since that time she has held a variety of academic and public sector posts focusing largely on tobacco control research. Ann has an established international reputation, receiving a World Health Organisation award for contributions to tobacco control in 1998. She has published more than 250 academic papers book chapters, reports and opinion pieces on the subject and her research ranges across prevention, cessation, harm reduction and local, national and international policy. Ann was a co-author of the recent systematic review of tobacco product packaging which underpinned the recent government consultation on plain packaging and has a particular interest in the relationship between smoking, mental health and inequalities. She is Deputy Director of the UK Centre for Tobacco Control Studies. Competing Interest: Professor McNeill leads the Nicotine Research Group in the Addictions Department, IoPPN and receives funding for projects from a variety of funders such as Cancer Research UK (CRUK) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and has no links with any tobacco or vaping product manufacturers. Professor McNeill is a NIHR Senior Investigator

Dr. Robin Mermelstein, a Distinguished Professor, College of Liberal Arts and Science, Department of Psychology, directs the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She also is a research professor of community health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health, and the co-director of the UIC Center for Clinical and Translational Science. Her research interests fall broadly in the area of tobacco use, with studies ranging from longitudinal examinations of the etiology of youth smoking to cessation interventions for adult smokers. Since the mid 1990s, Dr. Mermelstein has been the principal investigator of a series of studies, including two consecutive program projects funded by the National Cancer Institute, to investigate trajectories of smoking patterns among adolescents and young adults, with a focus on social and emotional contextual factors. In addition, she has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to examine factors related to youth smoking, and by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and the National Cancer Institute for studies of adult smoking reduction and cessation. Other areas of research focus include health behaviors of young adults and motivational interventions to increase smoking cessation. Dr. Mermelstein is the past-president of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco and serves on national research review committees of the National Institutes of Health. She served on the Institute of Medicine committee that wrote the 2015 consensus study report, Public Health Implications of Raising the Minimum Age of Legal Access to Tobacco Products. She directed the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's national program office of Partners with Tobacco Use Research Centers: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Advancing Science and Policy Studies. As part of this program, RWJF collaborated with both NCI and the National Institute on Drug Abuse in funding the Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Centers. In 2014, the University of Illinois at Chicago named Dr. Mermelstein Woman of the Year for her contributions to women's health and professional development.

Stefanie Miller is a Managing Director of FiscalNote Markets in Washington, D.C., where she leads the tobacco, cannabis, politics and fiscal policy practice areas. Stefanie has worked at the intersection of Wall Street and Washington since 2007, and her tobacco coverage focuses on the regulatory risks posed by federal, state and municipal policies on both incumbents and new entrants into the industry. Stefanie received her MBA from Georgetown University and her BA in economics and political science from the University of Nebraska. She appears frequently as a commentator on CNBC and Bloomberg TV and is quoted regularly in financial press.

Caitlin Notley is a social scientist, with extensive experience running qualitative studies as stand alone projects, to develop interventions, or alongside clinical trials. Her particular areas of research expertise are tobacco smoking cessation, relapse prevention and trajectories of electronic cigarette use. Professor Notley leads the Addiction Research Group at the University of East Anglia, and is Director of the Faculty of Medicine and Health ‘Citizen’s Academy’. She is an experienced Cochrane review author, as a member of the Tobacco Addiction Group, and an Associate Editor for the journals Addiction and Nicotine and Tobacco research. Currently, Professor Notley is leading two large NIHR funded randomised controlled trials evaluating a relapse prevention intervention and smoking cessation support, including the offer of a vape starter kit, for patients attending hospital emergency departments.

Professor Tikki PANG is an Indonesian citizen and is presently Visiting Professor, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He was previously Visiting Professor, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (2012-2020) and Director, Research Policy & Cooperation, World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva, Switzerland (1999-2012). Prior to joining WHO, he was Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Institute of Postgraduate Studies & Research, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1989-1999) and Lecturer/Associate Professor, Dept of Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1977-1989). He was Co-Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Dengue & Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever at the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (1982-1995). He holds a PhD in Immunology-Microbiology from the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists (UK), Institute of Biology (UK), American Academy of Microbiology (USA), Academy of Medicine of Malaysia, and Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS). He has published >250 scientific articles and 12 books and was lead author on several major WHO reports including the World Health Report 2013: Research for Universal Health Coverage (2013), Knowledge for Better Health (2004) and Genomics and World Health (2002). Professor Pang has a recognisable profile as a public health expert both nationally and internationally. His research interests are in the epidemiology, pathogenesis, laboratory diagnosis and prevention of infectious diseases, biosecurity and dual-use research, genomics &  health, and in health research policy, health research systems, global health governance, development of research capabilities in developing countries, linkages between research and policy, vaccine confidence and harm reduction approaches to mitigate health problems. He has >30 years of teaching experience at undergraduate & postgraduate levels in the fields of medical microbiology, immunology, global health policy & issues,  and in evidence-informed policy development. He has supervised 20 Master’s degree and 10 PhD candidates.  

The founder and managing director of ECigIntelligence, Tim is a UK-qualified attorney, having worked at the European Commission, BSkyB and Herbert Smith (an international law firm), AOL Europe, as director of public affairs at Betfair (IPO in 2010 valued at £1.5bn), and as a partner in a New York VC-funded start-up in the diamond sector. Tim holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the University of Law, London and a Masters in Geology from Oxford University.

Louise Ross has worked in stop smoking settings since 2004. Having launched the first vape-friendly Stop Smoking Service in 2014, she has continued to advocate for tobacco harm reduction, wearing a number of different hats. She is a freelance clinical consultant at the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training, Vice Chair and mental health lead at the New Nicotine Alliance, and Business Development Manager at the Smoke Free app.  

Steven Schroeder, MD, is Distinguished Professor of Health and Healthcare at the University of California San Francisco, where he directs the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center (SCLC). A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School, he trained in internal medicine at Harvard and in epidemiology at the CDC. He held faculty positions at Harvard and George Washington University. Between 1990 and 2002 he was President of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where he initiated programs in tobacco control that resulted in $500 million in grant expenditures during his tenure. The SCLC, which he founded in 2003, works with professional societies, federal and state organizations, and advocacy groups to both increase the number of smokers who attempt to quit and increase the probability of a successful quit. It has partnered with over 80 organizations, launched the “Ask, Advise, Refer (to a quitline)” alternative for busy clinicians, developed the blue card for 1 – 800-QUIT NOW (over 5 million now in circulation), broadened the range of clinicians involved in smoking cessation, and helped to focus more attention on the lethal combination of smoking and behavioral health conditions. A member of the National Academy of Medicine (formerly IOM), he chaired the American Legacy Foundation Board of Directors (now Truth Initiative), and served on the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine for 19 years.

Dr Shahab is Professor of Health Psychology at University College London and past President for the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco – Europe. He trained in psychology, epidemiology and neuroscience and has more than 17 years’ experience in addiction research, tobacco control and health psychology. Dr Shahab’s expertise spans work on novel behavioural and pharmacological smoking cessation interventions, biomarkers, tobacco product regulation and policy, digital health and tobacco and alcohol use epidemiology. Dr Shahab has collaborated with academic as well as non-academic (e.g. governmental and non-governmental) partners and to date has authored over 140 scientific papers, reports and reviews in this area.

The Science Media Centre a UK charity set up in 2002 to help scientists communicate the evidence on controversial issues to the public through the national news media.  Tom has degrees in Artificial Intelligence and Bioinformatics, and he joined the SMC in April 2008.  In that time he has worked on a number of high profile stories including mobile phones and cancer, GM crops, fracking and climate change; in every case it was vitally important that the voices of the very best scientists were heard among the uproar.  Although independent, the SMC is unashamedly pro-science and has no ‘brand’ to promote.  This gives them the freedom to concentrate on what is important: keeping sound, evidence-based science at the top of the news agenda.

Frances Thirlway is a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, University of York (UK). She has carried out research on e-cigarette take-up and on intergenerational trajectories of smoking and quitting in the North of England. She is also involved in research exploring tobacco use and cessation in Uganda and Pakistan. Frances combines painstaking qualitative and ethnographic fieldwork with a strong theoretical focus. She explores tobacco use and cessation as cultural practices taken up or discarded according to their compatibility with relational, classed and gendered moral identities. Her approach challenges conventional thinking in a field dominated by behavioural psychology.

Kenneth E. Warner is the Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor Emeritus of Public Health and Dean Emeritus at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he was on the faculty from 1972-2017. He served as Dean from 2005-2010 and as a department chair from 1982-88 and 1992-95. An economist, Dr. Warner earned his A.B. degree from Dartmouth College and M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University. Presented in over 300 professional publications, including 7 books, Dr. Warner’s research has focused on tobacco and health policy. Dr. Warner served as the World Bank’s representative to negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. He also served as the Senior Scientific Editor of the 25th anniversary Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health. During 2004-05 he was President of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. He was a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Truth Initiative. Currently, he is a member of the FDA Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee and an elected member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern Michigan College. Dr. Warner’s honors and awards include: the Surgeon General’s Medallion, conferred by Dr. C. Everett Koop in 1989; election to membership in the National Academy of Medicine in 1996; a Luther L. Terry Award for Exemplary Leadership in Tobacco Control in 2003; the Alton Ochsner Award Relating Smoking and Disease in 2010; and the triennial Doll-Wynder Award from the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco in 2017.

Robert West is Professor Emeritus of Health Psychology at University College London, UK.  He is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Addiction. He specialises in addiction and behaviour change and has authored or co-authored more than 900 scientific works including several books: Energise: The Secrets of Motivation, Theory of Addiction, Models of Addiction, The SmokeFree Formula, and The Behaviour Change Wheel. His personal website is www.rjwest.co.uk. Twitter: @robertjwest. He has undertaken research and consultancy for companies that develop and manufacture smoking cessation medications but not e-cigarettes. He is an unpaid advisor to the UK’s National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training. Most of his research is funded by Cancer Research UK.