Our Vice-Presidents
Dame Judi Dench CH FRSA DLitt
Rachel Weisz
Patricia Hodge OBE
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
Tim Yeo
Our Trustees
Lord Hameed of Hampstead CBE DL
Chair of Trustees
Dr Khalid Hameed is the Chairman of Alpha Hospital Group, and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the London International Hospital. Prior to this, he was the Executive Director & Chief Executive Officer of the Cromwell Hospital in London. He chairs the Commonwealth Youth Exchange Council and is a board member of the British Muslim Research Centre and the Ethnic Minorities Foundation. He is an executive member of the Maimonides Foundation. He received a CBE in the 2004 New Year’s Honours and was awarded the Sternberg Award for 2005 for his contribution to further Christian – Muslim – Jewish Relations.
Khalid has received numerous national and international honours. He is a governor of International Students House, Chairman of The Woolf Institute of Abrahamic Faiths, and a vice-president of the Friends of the British Library. In 2006 he became the first Asian to be appointed High Sheriff of Greater London. He was named British Asian of the Year in 2007 and was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2009, having previously received the Padma Shri in 1992.
Dr Jack Singer
Vice Chair
Jack Singer is a consultant paediatrician in private practice covering all aspects of paediatric medicine and has a particular interest in neurodevelopmental paediatrics and allergies. He trained in Boston, USA at The Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, and Harvard University. He then spent four years at the National Institute of Child Health & Human Development in the National Institute of Health, Bethesda Maryland. He was a Rockefeller Foundation – Population Council Fellow with Professor Lionel Penrose at the Galton Laboratory, London. He then joined Professor Paul Paulani at The Paediatric Research Unit at Guy’s Hospital. He is also an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Child Health at Imperial College and has published many research papers and chapters in Paediatrics.
Jack is a member of Council of the Independent Doctors Federation, and an assessor for the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health. He is also a trustee of the Sick Children’s Trust.
Libby Aird-Brown
Libby Aird-Brown is a licenced Insolvency Practitioner and Certified Fraud Examiner and head of management support services and restructuring with The MacDonald Partnership plc.
She has led the refinancing firm’s involvement in a number of complex cases and has extensive insolvency and turnaround finance experience. Libby specialises in company turnarounds, solvent and insolvent restructuring activity as well as special projects.
Sara Cooke
Sara Cooke read Psychology (Cognitive Neuroscience) at the University of St Andrews with scholarships to the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, USA and the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. On graduation Sara joined an American bank, working in Chicago, London and Madrid before leaving the City to lecture in psychology.
A mother of two sons, the younger of whom has a rare chromosome abnormality causing learning difficulties and autistic features, Sara has spent many years being a carer and advocate. She was Deputy Chair of Governors of a special needs school, is a longstanding trustee of the William Little Foundation and also chairs the D G Lynall Foundation, a charitable grant-making trust.
Sara is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Barbers, an ancient City livery company with historic and ongoing connections with the medical profession.
Professor Michael Crawford
Michael Crawford, Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Medicine’s Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction at Imperial College London, is one of the UK’s leading experts on nutrition. Based at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, Michael’s research, much of it in the gap where science and chemistry meet, has been published in many prestigious journals. His work on the evolution and health of the brain, in particular its dependence on omega-3 fatty acids and its vital importance for maternal health, has been internationally recognised.
Michael founded the Mother & Child Foundation and its research arm, the Institute of Brain Chemistry & Human Nutrition.
Kasper de Graaf
Kasper de Graaf has worked as an innovator in cities and organisations for over thirty years, focusing on urban challenges and organisational culture. He authored the Legible London study that led to the creation of Europe’s largest pedestrian wayfinding system and has delivered innovation schemes in Istanbul, Vancouver, Manchester, Glasgow and numerous other cities. He is a director of 2NQ, which develops community arts and culture projects in North London, and vice-chair of the Finsbury Park Trust.
Kasper is a Steering Board Member of the UK Design Action Plan and has chaired Design Manchester’s annual public debate about design and society since 2018.
Our Researchers
Dr AnnieBelle Sassine
A certified dietician by background, Dr AnnieBelle Sassine holds a Master’s degree in Public Health Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Ph.D. in Clinical Medicine Research from Imperial College London where she studied maternal fatty acid profiles in preterm birth. Having worked in cross-cultural contexts on three continents, AnnieBelle has a decade of professional experience in the nutrition and health field and strong research skills focusing on maternal and child nutrition for the prevention of preterm birth and early-life diseases.
Professor Mark Johnson
Mark is the Clinical Chair in Obstetrics at Imperial College, and Director of Research and Consultant Obstetrician at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital focusing on high risk maternity care. Mark began his research early in his career with his PhD in 1995, supported by The William’s Fellowship from the University of London, defining the role of relaxin in human pregnancy.
Clinically, Mark initially trained in general medicine, endocrinology and diabetes, specialising in reproductive endocrinology. He set up the highly successful IVF unit in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. He later trained in Obstetrics and Gynaecology, becoming the only dually accredited Consultant in General Medicine and Obstetrics and Gynaecology in the UK, following which he became the Professor in Clinical Obstetrics at Imperial College in 2010.
Professor Michael Crawford
Michael Crawford graduated in chemistry at Edinburgh University. Interested in the gap between medicine and chemistry, he studied biochemistry and physiology and then went to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School where he obtained a doctorate in chemical pathology in 1960. His interest took him to Africa to establish teaching in pre-clinical and clinical chemistry, participating in setting up the Muhimbili Medical School in Dar-es-Salaam. His research work focused on the causes of tropical nutrition-related disorders in adults.
Michael returned to London to head the Biochemistry Department at the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine. His comparative studies in Africa and the UK revealed the link between arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acids, the brain and its evolution. From 1982-92 he held a special Chair in Biochemistry at the University of Nottingham.
He has been awarded several honours, including the prestigious Danone Chair at the University of Ghent in 2000, the International Prize for Modern Nutrition, a Centenary Award from Hoffmann-La Roche for “outstanding contribution to the biological understanding of the significance of long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids and for his research on preterm & term infant brain development”. He was President of the IVth and VIth International Congresses of the International Society for Fats and Lipids, and rapporteur and WHO consultant for the 1978 joint Expert Consultation on the Role of Dietary Fats and Oils in Human Nutrition; and again the WHO consultant for the 1994 and 2008-2010 joint consultations. In March 2015 Professor Crawford was awarded the prestigious Chevreul Medal for his work on nutrition and the brain. In In September 2016 he was was awarded The Alexander Leaf Distinguished Scientist Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The primary objective of his present work is to understand the cause of the rise in brain disorders, and especially the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders. Much of this work has been done on maternal and preterm infant nutrition in the Homerton and Newham General Hospital Trusts in the East End of London, with a programme started in 2009 with Imperial College. He has published over 300 scientific papers and three books, as well as contributing chapters to several multi-author books on the topic of lipids and health.
