LEAD Core Team

Chris' research has been funded by BBSRC, EPSRC, MRC, NIH, Wellcome Trust, smaller charities and industry.

It is highly collaborative, involving teams of biologists, chemists, engineers and physicists across universities in the UK SWON Alliance CA, CHN Accelerate CHUNK US, SA H3D, EU, AUS to help drive innovations from this research forward to a commercial outcome, which includes the development and use of high throughput biochemical assays and structural determination using the XChem platform at Diamond Light source and virtual reality to visualise antibiotic: target protein interactions. Industry partners past include AstraZeneca, Basilea, BicycleTx, Cubist, LifeArc, Merck, Novartis, Novobiotic, GSK.

He is currently increasingly engaged in the open source antibiotics discovery program and helping to develop and influence global AMR discovery policy and training for the next generation of AMR leaders. This has leapt forward with a ~£3M donation to establish and refund the Sir Howard Dalton Centre a £1.5M donation from the GB Sasakawa Foundation to drive UK-Japan collaboration to tackle AMR.

The GBSF award will support two policy fellows, one from UKHSA the 'Dame Sally Davies Fellowship' and another NCGM, Tokyo the 'Mr Yasuhisa Shinozaki Fellowship' plus four science programs arising from the GBSF/HDC Tokyo workshop March 2024.

From this and wider international engagement to LEAD (Leadership to Enhance Antimicrobial Discovery) program has emerged to enable international innovation, new partnerships and equity in discovery and access.

David supports the LEAD program through policy analysis and development, training of fellows and partnership building. He is the co-founder and director of ARMoR, the Alliance for Reducing Antimicrobial Resistance. ARMoR works to strengthen policy for antimicrobial research, development and access, with a strong focus on global health.

His work spans research, policy design and advocacy, with particular emphasis on market shaping tools and other policy approaches that can support the development of new antimicrobials.

Since founding ARMoR he has helped establish the organisation as a recognised contributor to the antimicrobial R&D policy landscape and has developed partnerships with GARDP, UICC, the World Bank and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

He is a chemist by training and has experience in the pharmaceutical sector, having previously worked as a scientist and supply chain manager at AstraZeneca.

Gerald BloomGerald is the Coordinator of the LEAD programme for AMR Policy Fellows.

He is a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies in the UK.

He is a health system analyst who has worked for many years on the adaptation of health systems to rapid social, demographic, economic and technological change in a number of countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

He has been a member of a WHO Advisory Group on the Governance of the Private Sector for Universal Health Coverage.

His current research is on the implications of rapid progress in biosciences and digital health for future health systems.

His focus is on the potential role of international collaboration in the development of these technologies and governance of their incorporation into health systems to ensure equitable access to care.

Priya is a Coordinating Committee Member of LEAD, where she is responsible for progressing the coalition’s activities in India/South Asia, and ASEAN, with a focus on antimicrobial drug discovery and stewardship.

She is a public health specialist and health systems researcher with extensive experience across South and Southeast Asia, Africa, the United States, and Canada. She is the Director of the Centre for Sustainable Health Innovations, Singapore and Senior Public Health Scientist and Director of Strategy, External Partnerships and Growth at the Public Health Foundation of India.

Her work centres on UHC, antimicrobial stewardship, digital health innovation and the role of private sector in strengthening mixed health systems in low- and middle-income countries. She has led major national initiatives on healthcare reform, serving as Secretariat Director for the Government of India’s High-Level Expert Group on Universal Health Coverage. Priya is also Co-Lead of the OASIS consortium, winner of the MIT Trinity Challenge for AMR innovation. She co-founded the Mutual Learning Platform for Mixed Health Systems and leads regional collaborations integrating low-cost technological and AI-enabled innovations for primary healthcare. She serves on multiple national and state expert committees, WHO advisory groups, and chairs the Private Sector in Health Thematic Working Group of Health Systems Global.

Riko is LEAD International Liaison Manager at the Howard Dalton Centre, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick.

She coordinates overall activities of the LEAD (Leadership in Enhancing Antimicrobial Discovery) coalition, fostering UK-global partnerships to advance sustainable antibiotic discovery and development.

Prior to Warwick, she led public health projects at the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), where she organised high-level dialogues that emphasised the connection between AMR and Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

Riko brings extensive field experience from Latin America and Africa, having collaborated with ministries of health, UNHCR, and hospitals on public health-related initiatives.

A qualified nurse with clinical experience, she holds a Bachelor of Nursing from Australian Catholic University and a Master’s in International Public Health from the University of Queensland. Having lived across continents, she thrives in multicultural environments.

Tom coordinates LEAD’s communications, including its digital channels and publications.

In 2022, Tom co-convened an AMR policy dialogue focused on driving innovative solutions for antimicrobial discovery and previously worked with colleagues from the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex, to visualise key insights from a UKRI-MRC project analysing the UK’s antimicrobial discovery and development innovation system.

Outside of LEAD, Tom manages communications and engagement activities for the IDS health and nutrition research cluster’s portfolio of projects and programmes.