Professor Maria G Belvisi

Maria Belvisi is Professor and Head of the Respiratory Pharmacology group in the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College.

She obtained a BSc in pharmacology in 1986 at King's College London and a PhD at the National Heart & Lung Institute in 1990. Professor Belvisi is an internationally recognized expert in the respiratory field with both academic and industrial experience. Her research is focused on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of asthma, COPD and chronic cough and developing therapies for these diseases. She is involved in multidisciplinary translational research which integrates basic science with clinical studies, thereby providing novel insights into common airway diseases. She also worked for a period in the pharmaceutical industry leading a team in the Respiratory Therapeutic area at Aventis Pharma. Her achievements in industry included running the pre-clinical pharmacology effort in support of an inhaled corticosteroid with an improved therapeutic ratio (ciclesonide/Alvesco), which is now approved for use in man in several countries. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Pharmacological Society in 2005.

Professor Belvisi has an extensive publication record in peer review journals and serves on the Editorial Board of several journals. She has also received several prizes and awards including the Pfizer Award for Science in the UK (1994) and the Trabbuchi Award (1996) and the Woman in Inflammation Science (2009, awarded by the World Inflammation Society). In addition to her responsibilities as Professor and Head of Respiratory Pharmacology, Maria Belvisi is also the Ambassador for Women for the Faculty of Medicine and is a member of the Respiratory Research Committee, the Principal's Advisory Group and the Equal Opportunities and Diversity Committee. She is also a member of the steering committees for the Royal Brompton & Harefield Biomedical Research Unit (BRU) and the Centre for Integrative Mammalian Physiology and Pharmacology (CIMPP).