Meet the Team

Dr Julia Boyle BSc PhD – Director

Dr Julia Boyle is a pharmacologist and Director of the Surrey Clinical Research Centre. Julia graduated from King’s College, University of London in 1988 and completed a PhD in Pharmacology at the School of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, University of Surrey in 1992.  Following a post-doctoral research position at Cornell University Medical College, Julia returned to Surrey to continue her postdoctoral research.  
She has worked in pharmacology for over 20 years and with the Surrey CRC for almost 10 years.  During that time she has conducted more than 34 early phase studies in patients and healthy volunteers. Her particular interests are in performance impairment, cognition and sleep.
Julia is author of more than 25 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has been a speaker at international meetings and workshops in Europe and the US.

Dr Hubert Bland MD – Chief Medical Officer

Dr Bland is a  Pharmaceutical Physician and Medical Director at the Surrey Clinical Research Centre. He has broad experience in clinical, pharmaceutical and device development including time at Linde Healthcare where he was the Head of Clinical Development and Medical Affairs.

Professor Derk-Jan Dijk BSc, MSc, PhD – Director of Sleep/Wake Research, Professor of Sleep and Physiology and Director of the Surrey Sleep Research Unit Centre (SSRC)

The SSRC is a centre which is dedicated to multidisciplinary approaches to sleep research and education. Prof Dijk has more than 25 years of experience in sleep research. His research interests include the evaluation of human sleep and biological rhythms, quantitative EEG analysis, effects of light on sleep, performance and circadian rhythms, aging and sleep disorders.

He has worked collaboratively with the Pharmaceutical Industry on a number of projects involving the development of hypnotics and counter measures for shift-work and jet lag. His research is also funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and The Airforce Office of Scientific Research.
Professor Dijk is a Member of the European Sleep Research Society, Sleep Research Society, British Sleep Society, The Society for Neuroscience and the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms. He has published more than 150 papers on sleep and circadian rhythms and is frequently invited to speak at national and international scientific conferences.

Professor David Lewis MB, BCh, MSc, MD, Professor of Clinical Vaccinology

Prof Lewis qualified in medicine and surgery in Cardiff Wales and subsequently received a doctorate in HIV immunology.  He has specialised in infectious diseases and tropical medicine and was Professor of Clinical Vaccinology and Medicine at St George’s Hospital, University of London.
Prof Lewis holds an advisory position with the Health and Safety Executive advising on genetic modification, gene therapy and clinical trials with genetically modified molecules.
He has been Principal Investigator or Chief Investigator of numerous parenteral and mucosal vaccine trials, including first-use in humans of GM live attenuated mucosal vaccines.
Prof Lewis was Deputy Director of the Vaccine Institute at St George’s and the lead for adult research.  He developed the St George’s Vaccine Institute from scratch as an international centre of excellence in translational medicine and vaccine trials, specialising in mucosal immunology, mucosal vaccine delivery, and live genetically modified mucosal vaccines.

Prof Lewis is coordinator of multi-national consortia conducting basic research and clinical trials, funded by EU and Gates, with responsibilities including design, implementation and analysis of clinical trials; commissioning and overseeing GMP manufacture, release, QA/QC, and compilation of IMPD and regulatory dossiers; design, commissioning and reporting toxicology studies; trial project management and interaction with regulatory authorities. He has published more than 50 research papers on clinical vaccinology and is frequently invited to speak at national and international scientific conferences, and to teach on advanced vaccinology courses.

Surrey CRC Staff