About
ImmunoMIND is an inter-disciplinary research consortium that brings together academic expertise and people with lived experience across an international network of leading universities in Amsterdam, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford.
​
Management Team
​​​​
​​
The ImmunoMIND management team has day-to-day responsibility for coordinating activity across the hub, managing the overall budget and liaising with the Mental Health Platform at Cambridge.
​
The management team is supported by the Co-Production Council, a team of people with lived experience which has agency and a designated budget to get involved in all aspects of our research programme.
​​​
​
​
Ed Bullmore
​​​​​​ImmunoMIND PI and Chair of the management team, co-lead of work on brain network biomarkers
​​​​
Ed was a Professor of Psychiatry in Cambridge from 1999 until 2025, when he moved to a new role as the Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King’s College London.
Golam Khandaker
ImmunoMIND Co-I, Deputy Chair of the management team, Chair of the Big Data Group, co-lead of the work on inflammatory protein targets
​
Golam is a professor of psychiatry and immunology at the University of Bristol and has been a research pioneer in understanding immune and inflammatory pathways to mental illness. He is lead editor of the Textbook of Immunopsychiatry published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.
Paul Fletcher
Co-I and academic lead of the co-produced work on digital gameplay for cognitive testing
​
Paul is Bernard Wolfe professor of health neuroscience at the University of Cambridge with a long-standing interest in working with companies, like Ninja Theory, to represent the experience of psychosis in digital games and to use games as a new way of measuring cognitive performance that is accessible and engaging to young people.
Tom Gaunt
Co-I and co-lead of the work on inflammatory protein targets
​
Tom is professor of health and biomedical informatics and programme lead in the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. He has expertise in using statistical tools like Mendelian randomization to identify which genes are causal for complex health disorders.
Mary-Ellen Lynall
Co-I and lead of the work on immune cell targets, co-lead of the work on immunophenotyping of early psychosis, and biomarkers lead for the Mental Health Platform
​
Mary-Ellen is a psychiatrist and immunologist who is currently completing clinical specialist training and building her research group with a focus on detailed analysis of single immune cells from blood samples as a precise biomarker of an individual’s immune or inflammatory risk of serious mental illness or neurodevelopmental disorders.
Andrew McIntosh
Co-I and co-lead of the work on metabolic protein targets
​
Andrew is a professor of psychiatry in the University of Edinburgh, a senior coordinator of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and the Director of the UKRI Mental Health Platform. He has pioneered use of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to understand the genetic architecture of schizophrenia, depression and other severe mental illness.
Yuri Milaneschi
Co-I and co-lead of the co-produced work on lifestyle management
​
Yuri is a psychiatrist and an epidemiologist at Amsterdam University Medical Centre (UMC) with expertise in analysis of the safety and efficacy of lifestyle management and interventions like diet and exercise to improve depression and other mental health problems.
Graham Murray
Co-I and co-lead of the work package on immunophenotyping of early psychosis
​
Graham is a professor of psychiatry in the University of Cambridge with a long-standing interest in causal factors and outcomes of early psychosis. He is co-lead of the Early Psychosis Workstream of the OLS/NIHR-funded Mental Health Mission, which aims to recruit a national cohort of 1,200 young people with a diagnosis of early psychosis.
Brenda Penninx
Co-I and co-lead of the co-produced work on lifestyle management
​
Brenda is a professor of psychiatric epidemiology at Amsterdam UMC and PI since 2004 of the large open science study called NESDA (the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety), and other population cohorts, which have supported her pioneering work on immuno-metabolic pathways to atypical depression.
Ben Perry
Co-I and co-lead of the co-produced work on predicting physical health problems with anti-psychotic medication
​
Ben is an associate professor of psychiatry in the University of Birmingham and has expertise in using clinical and biomarker data to predict adverse physical health outcomes in people with severe mental illness. He has produced an app called PsyMetric which individuals can use on their phone to make informed medication decisions.
Sarah Rae
Chair of Co-Production Council
​
Sarah has extensive leadership experience in co-producing research for mental health, including as PI on an NIHR-funded study, as well as relevant lived experience. She is a member of the Mental Health Platform working group on Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE).
Xueyi Shen
Co-I and co-lead of the work on metabolic protein targets
​
Shen is an associate professor in the University of Edinburgh with expertise in statistical genetics and psychiatry. She is co-lead of the Functional Genomics Working Group in the Psychiatric Genetics Consortium.
Victoria Theobald
Project manager for ImmunoMIND
​
Victoria is based in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and provides project management support for ImmunoMIND across all participating sites and the Co-Production Council. She is also involved in managing operationalisation of the Early Psychosis workstream of the Mental Health Mission.
Varun Warrier
Co-I and co-lead of the work on brain network biomarkers
​
Varun is an assistant professor of psychiatric genetics in the University of Cambridge with expertise in statistical analysis of GWAS data on brain imaging phenotypes, including new markers of brain structural networks or connectomes.
Naomi Wray
Co-I and lead of the work on computational repurposing of immune and metabolic drugs for psychiatry
​
Naomi is the Michael Davys Professor of Neuroscience (Psychiatric Genomics) at the University of Oxford. She has been a pioneer in advanced methods of statistical genetics for understanding the genetic architecture of depression, schizophrenia and other severe mental health disorders.
​​​​​​
​​​
​​
​
ImmunoMIND is funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) for a five-year period from 2024 to 2029 as part of the United Kingdom Research & Innovation (UKRI) Mental Health Platform.
​
The Mental Health Platform is a network of researchers across six different hubs with the shared aim of accelerating research into severe mental illness (SMI) and improving the diagnosis and treatment of those affected.​
​
​​​
