Meet the team

Dr Angus Nightingale

About: Dr Nightingale is a Consultant Cardiologist with clinical and research interests in hypertension, heart failure and valvular heart disease.  He is the principle investigator for a number of clinical studies in hypertension and heart failure, with a particular interest in how the brain and heart interact through the autonomic nervous system. 

Dr Nightingale runs the BHI Hypertension Clinic, treating patients with challenging hypertension.  His focus is on using the group's unique expertise in assessing autonomic function to develop new treatments for patients.

Professional Background: Dr Nightingale qualified from Cambridge University in 1992 MA MB BChir.  He undertook an MD in Cardiff and Oxford with Professor Michael Frenneaux.  The University of Wales awarded his MD in 2002, with a thesis entitled "Role of Endothelial Dysfunction in Exercise Limitation in Chronic Heart Failure".

Dr Nightingale worked as a Post-doctoral Researcher and Consultant Cardiologist in Adelaide, Australia.  He was appointed Consultant Cardiologist at the BHI in 2006 and runs the Heart Failure Service and the Hypertension Clinic. 

Dr Amy Burchell

About: Dr Burchell has been able to combine her interests in Cardiology and Neuroscience, and has just completed her PhD in the School of Clinical Sciences at the University of Bristol.

She is investigating the autonomic physiology of patients undergoing renal denervation for drug resistant hypertension. 

Dr Burchell is working alongside Dr Nightingale and other colleagues in the specialist Hypertension Clinic, to help provide more structured care for patients with challenging hypertension.

Professional Background: Dr Burchell completed her pre-clinical medical training at Trinity Hall, Cambridge before transferring on to New College, Oxford for her clinical studies.  Whilst at Cambridge she undertook a BA in Neuroscience, with a special interest in higher cognitive function and episodic memory.

She worked as a junior doctor in Oxford, Reading and Bristol before commencing training as a Cardiology Registrar in the Severn Deanery in 2009. 



Dr Tom Hinton

About: Dr Hinton is working towards an MD at the University of Bristol.

He is investigating the potential role of carotid body overactivity as a cause of hypertension in young adults. Additionally he is coordinating a study looking at the role of inflammation in heart failure. Dr Hinton works alongside Dr Nightingale in the specialist Hypertension Clinic.

Professional Background: Dr Hinton completed his undergraduate training at the University of Sheffield Medical School graduating in 2012.  Whilst at Sheffield he undertook an intercalated BMedSci during which he helped to develop a risk score to predict procedural mortality following percutaneous coronary intervention. Following graduation he underwent foundation training in the Mersey region before moving to the South West for core medical training, working in Taunton and Bristol. He joined the CardioNomics team in 2016.

Dr Katrina Hope

About: Dr Hope is a senior Anaesthetic Registrar and British Heart Foundation Clinical Research Fellow. She joined the team in 2013 and is interested in cardiovascular physiology and trying to understand why autonomic diseases such as high blood pressure and heart failure occur.

In her clinical job, Dr Hope sees many patients with these diseases coming for operations and unwell on intensive care. She hopes that in the future, by knowing more about the physiology of autonomic diseases we can improve the outcomes of patients undergoing operations. 

She is currently doing a PhD looking comparing the role of the carotid body in different groups of heart failure patients.

Professional Background:  Dr Hope graduated with BMBS from the University of Nottingham in 2007, having also completed a Bachelor of Medical Sciences degree, in which she looked at the immunology of cancer cells. She worked as junior doctor in Chesterfield & Derby before starting her training in anaesthesia in Central London. She then completed a full time masters course in 2012 at King's College Hospital, London, in Human & Applied Physiology. As part of this, she researched non-freezing cold injury, at the University of Portsmouth.

Dr Hope started her anaesthetic registrar training in Bristol in 2013. She is currently undertaking her PhD.

Professor Julian Paton

About: Prof. Paton was awarded his Chair of Physiology at the University of Bristol in 2001.

His key interests are in understanding why sympathetic activity destined for the cardiovascular system becomes elevated in conditions of hypertension.  Prof. Paton believes that interventions to reduce sympathetic activity will be highly significant for controlling blood pressure and reducing damage to end organs.

Prof. Paton is currently involved in 4 translational clinical studies looking at novel approaches to controlling sympathetic nervous activity in hypertensive patients. He has recently moved to New Zealand but continues to work with and maintains strong links with the group.

Professional Background: Prof. Paton studied at the University of Birmingham (BSc) and University of London (PhD). 

His post-doctoral training was at the University of London, E.I. Dupont de Nemours (USA) and the University of Gottingen (Germany).  Subsequently, he was awarded a British Heart Foundation Fellowship based at the University of Bristol.

Prof. Paton has published 260 original papers and 71 reviews on neural regulation of the cardiovascular and respiratory systems.  He has been awarded £20 million in research funding. He gave keynote lectures at the Council for High Blood Pressure, USA, International Society of Hypertension, The Hood Lecture, Auckland, New Zealand and the International Union of Physiological Sciences, Brazil (2017).  He has been the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Physiology and won a number of prestigious prizes including the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award.

Dr Emma Hart

 About: Dr Hart is a British Heart Foundation Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Univeristy of Bristol.  Her research interests focus on the mechanisms underlying the development of hypertension, specifically the role played by the autonomic nervous system and targeting this system to treat disease.

Dr Hart is an expert in a technique called microneurography, which is used to measure the activity of the sympathetic nervous system.  The technique is special as it can provide key information about how blood pressure is controlled.  Microneurography is carried out in only a handful of research institutes around the world.

Professional Background: Dr Hart completed her PhD at Brunel University and the University of Copenhagen (Cardiovascular Physiology).  She then went on to complete a Post-doctoral Research Fellowship at the Mayo Clinic (USA), where her reseach focussed on how the nervous system controlled blood pressure and the effect that ageing had on this control.

Dr Hart also completed a sabbatical at Goteborg University (Sweden) where she conducted research into how the nervous system changes in age and hypertension. 

Dr Sandra Neumann                                           

About: Miss Sandra Neumann joined the team in 2014 when she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Neural Dynamics PhD studentship. Her studies include investigating the dynamics of brain blood flow in hypertension, as well as the interactions between blood pressure and pain. 

Professional Background:   Sandra obtained her BSc (Hons) Neuroscience from the University of Bristol and then studied for a Joint Masters in Neuroscience programme at the University of Strasbourg (FR), University of Basel (CH) and the Albert-Ludwig University of Freiburg (D) while working for Roche Pharmaceuticals. She has just finished her PhD.