June 2026
ICAT Alumni Feature
Dr Kiran Reddy, ICAT Fellow (Cohort 4)
Current Role: Clinical Research Fellow in Intensive Care Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast and a Fellow in Intensive Care Medicine at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin
Clinical Discipline: Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine
PhD Focus: Precision medicine in critical care, particularly acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS).
What are your areas of research?
My research focuses on precision medicine in critical care, particularly acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). I study how apparently similar intensive care syndromes encompass distinct biological subgroups, especially hyperinflammatory and hypoinflammatory subphenotypes, and how these can be identified using biomarkers, near-patient assays, latent class analysis, transcriptomics/bioinformatics, and other data-driven methods. The translational goal is to use these subphenotypes to design and deliver adaptive and stratified clinical trials that test treatments in the patients most likely to benefit. I also have a longstanding interest in healthcare simulation, patient safety, and clinical research education.
How has your career progressed since completing your ICAT PhD?
ICAT has been the central structure through which I have developed from a specialist trainee interested in critical care research into a clinical academic leading and contributing to multicentre research programmes. I was an ICAT Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, and I am now a Clinical Research Fellow in Intensive Care Medicine at Queen’s University Belfast and a Fellow in Intensive Care Medicine at the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin. My research has progressed from subphenotype discovery and translational work to prospective bedside identification in PHIND, publication and grant activity, and the development of precision-medicine platform trials such as PANTHER (ISRCTN81435672).
What aspects of the ICAT programme have been most valuable in your clinical academic career?
The most valuable aspects have been protected academic time, mentorship, and access to the extensive clinical academic network. The programme allowed me to remain clinically grounded in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine while developing the methodological and operational skills needed for translational critical care research: clinical trial design, study governance, biomarker science, data analysis, publication, grant development, and multicentre collaboration. It also connected me with supervisors and mentors at Queen’s University Belfast and across the globe. ICAT helped convert an ICU research interest into a bench-to-bedside funded research programme.
How has your research improved patient outcomes, service delivery, or healthcare innovation?
The direct impacts on patient outcomes will come from interventional trials, but the PhD work has helped create the pathway to those trials. PHIND showed that inflammatory subphenotypes of ARDS can be identified prospectively at the bedside using a near-patient assay and a parsimonious classifier model, and that the hyperinflammatory group has substantially higher mortality. This moves subphenotyping from retrospective discovery towards practical patient stratification. he next translational step is PANTHER (ISRCTN81435672), a precision-medicine adaptive platform trial designed to test whether subphenotype-guided treatment improves outcomes, on which I am a co-investigator and have a key leadership role. My PhD enabled large-scale that aims to replace repeated neutral trials in broad syndromic populations with biologically informed trials that can target treatment more precisely.
How did the ICAT programme differ from other doctoral or training schemes you considered or experienced?
ICAT differed because it was not simply a PhD funding mechanism. It was a clinical academic training pathway that understood the competing demands of higher specialist training, clinical service, research, and career development. The structure provided protected academic time while maintaining a clinical identity, and the programme placed equal emphasis on mentorship, network-building, and post-PhD independence. That was particularly important in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine, where research questions are often time-critical, clinically embedded, and dependent on multidisciplinary collaboration across ICUs, trial units, laboratory teams, statisticians, and international investigators.
What opportunities did ICAT provide that you would not have had otherwise?
ICAT gave me the protected time and credibility to build collaborations that would have been impossible to establish from a standard PhD or in normal clinical training. Through the fellowship I worked within the Queen’s University Belfast Critical Care and Respiratory Research Group, I collaborated with trials units, worked in the laboratory, worked with industry and international academic partners, and developed links with investigators across the UK, Ireland, Europe, North America, and Australia. It also supported multiple leadership opportunities. I led PHIND across multiple centres, took a leading role in the PANTHER trial programme, and joined the executive committees of the HRB Irish Critical Care Clinical Trials Network and Irish Critical Care Clinical Trials Group. I became involved with the International Forum of Acute Care Trialists (InFACT), I chaired educational initiatives for early-career investigators, and I presented the work at major international meetings in the UK, the US, Europe, China, and Australia.
In what ways has ICAT influenced your ability to secure funding, fellowships, or protected research time?
ICAT helped me learn how to frame a clinically important observation as a fundable research question, build the right multidisciplinary team, and demonstrate feasibility through high-quality preliminary work. The fellowship itself provided substantial funding from the Wellcome Trust, the HRB, HSC R&D, HSE-NDTP and the university network to achieve my goals. Since then I have contributed as a co-investigator to larger programmes, including the HRB funded PRACTICAL-Ireland platform (€1.32 million), the NIHR EME-funded PANTHER platform (£5.998 million), an NIAA-funded peri-operative immune-phenotyping project (£29,666), and the NIHR EME funded international PANTHER consensus project (£181,128.58). ICAT also gave me practical experience in funder reporting, governance, protocol development, and delivery of a complex multicentre study, all of which have helped me argue for protected research time and build a sustainable clinical academic trajectory.
How has ICAT supported your development as an independent clinical academic leader?
ICAT accelerated my transition from doing research to leading research. During the fellowship I led the PHIND study (a multicentre prospective cohort study in the UK and Ireland). My work included study coordination, governance, investigator engagement, biomarker and clinical data generation, and integration of the results into the wider precision-medicine programme. I also developed leadership roles beyond the thesis, including executive committee membership in critical care trial networks peer-review and editorial activity, BSc project supervision, clinical research teaching, and leadership of the NIHR Associate Principal Investigator educational programme. Awards such as the Queen’s University Belfast Postgraduate Research Forum oral presentation prize, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine Emerging Investigator recognition, and a highly commended British Thoracic Society Young Investigator Award have also helped build confidence and visibility.
How have you navigated the balance between clinical and academic work since completing your PhD, and has your focus shifted over time?
The balance has required protected academic blocks, clear prioritisation, and a research programme that remains anchored in clinical practice. My focus is now much more geared towards research than it was pre-PhD, and I am aiming to apply for independent investigator grants soon. In the interim, I have managed to continue to work at 50% clinical/50% academic time by negotiating part-time contracts and through working with very helpful supervisors whom the ICAT programme had connected me with. I am keen to continue to maintain some clinical work, as it keeps the research patient-centred and ensures that proposed trial designs are feasible in busy ICUs.
What challenges have you faced in maintaining a clinical academic career, and what strategies have helped you overcome them?
The main challenges have been time, clinical rota pressures, the operational complexity of emergency ICU research, and the need to deliver a multicentre study during a period affected by COVID-19 and changing respiratory support practice. Emergency critical care research requires rapid recruitment, robust governance, reliable sample handling, and sustained engagement from busy clinical teams. The strategies that helped were protected time, strong mentorship, a committed trial-unit and laboratory team, collaborative site investigators and research nurses, and a willingness to build systems rather than rely on individual effort. Teaching, committee work, and peer-review activity also helped me stay connected to the wider academic community while developing the PhD.
Are there any specific research projects, grants, or collaborations you’ve pursued since completing your PhD?
Key projects and collaborations include PANTHER, an international precision-medicine adaptive platform trial in hypoxaemic acute respiratory failure/ARDS; PRACTICAL-Ireland, an HRB-funded adaptive clinical trials platform in acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure; a large body of transcriptomic mechanistic work from the biobank developed during the PhD; and multiple secondary analyses of completed clinical trials examining biological heterogeneity and peri-operative immune phenotypes. Ihave also helped develop research learning resources for early career clinical investigators in the UK and Ireland and remain involved in Irish and international critical care trial networks.
Selected links:
PHIND publication: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(26)00040-8/fulltext
PANTHER trial: https://panthertrial.org/
NIHR EME PANTHER consensus report: https://www.journalslibrary.nihr.ac.uk/eme/published-articles/TTND8896
Research Learning Lectures: https://sites.google.com/nihr.ac.uk/associatepischeme/events/research-learning-lectures/recordings
Principal Investigator Training Programme: https://iccctn.org/principal-investigator-training-programme/pi-training-programme
What advice would you give to current or prospective ICAT fellows about making the most of the programme?
Use the programme strategically from the start. Choose a research question that matters clinically, but also choose a supervisory team and environment that can help you answer it, and think about feasibility. Build a mentorship network rather than relying on one person. Learn the methods yourself, even when you are working with expert statisticians, laboratory scientists, or trialists, because independence requires enough methodological understanding to make good decisions. Say yes to opportunities that build skills and collaborations, but protect the core PhD work. Finally, think about the post-PhD trajectory early – the best ICAT projects are not isolated theses, but foundations for a sustainable clinical academic programme.
How do you relax in your spare time?
Most of my spare time is family time, and I try to maintain a clear separation between clinical/research work and time away from the hospital (though that is a big challenge!). I spend a lot of time taking my kids to sports training, playing LEGO with them, jumping on the trampoline, and taking them to the park. Beyond that, when I get a bit of free time for myself, I like to eat at nice restaurants, go SCUBA diving, and do yoga.
Looking ahead, what are your career aspirations?
My aim is to become an independent clinical academic in intensive care medicine, leading a translational and clinical-trials programme in precision medicine for acute respiratory failure and ARDS. My immediate ambition is to help deliver subphenotype-stratified platform trials such as PANTHER and use them to test whether biologically targeted treatment strategies can improve patient outcomes. Over time, I will take a bigger leadership role in the trial and add further treatment arms and diagnostic platform strategies. Longer term, I want to build a programme that integrates bedside phenotyping, mechanistic biology, pragmatic trial design, and international collaboration, while also training and supporting the next generation of clinical academics in critical care.
Are you still connected with the ICAT network, and has it contributed to ongoing collaborations or opportunities
Yes. ICAT remains an important network for mentorship, collaboration, and clinical academic identity. The programme connected me with a community of clinician scientists across Ireland and internationally, and those relationships have continued to shape opportunities. My current research network now extends to other international collaborative groups in critical care, but ICAT provided the foundation and the confidence to engage with those wider trial communities. I continue to contribute back to the network by supporting future fellows who want to build research careers in anaesthesia, intensive care medicine, and acute care trials.