About Professor Matthew Campbell
I hold a personal chair in Human Metabolism and Integrative Physiology, and I am Co-Director of NORI – the Northern Ophthalmic Research and Innovation Institute. I hold honorary titles at the Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science (University of Cambridge), the Joslin Diabetes Centre (Harvard University), the Leeds Institute for Metabolic and Cardiovascular Medicine (University of Leeds), and Zhejiang Gongshang University.
I hold/held expert advisory and consultancy roles for public, commercial, and charitable bodies, including the World Health Organisation, NHS England, UKRI, Diabetes UK, and Sage Publishing, and I am a member of several international consortia, including the International Consortium for Insulin Resistance in Type 1 Diabetes, which I co-chair.
In 2024, I was appointed as a co-chair for the Research Excellence Framework (REF29)(opens in new tab) People, Culture, and Environment Pilot Panel(opens in new tab), and currently serve as a REF29(opens in new tab) Strategy, People, and Research Environment Expert for Main Panel A(opens in new tab) – Medicine, Health, and Life Sciences, providing national leadership across the exercise on both criteria setting and assessment. I also serve as the Health and Care Innovation Lead for the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaboration North East and North Cumbria (NIHR ARC NENC)(opens in new tab).
I have attracted over £18.7M in research funding from UKRI, AMRC, industry and VCSE bodies, in addition to a £5M multi-partner strategic infrastructure investment bid to establish NORI. I have published over 150 peer-reviewed outputs, received several international awards for research, and developed sector-adopted online training courses on research integrity. In 2023, I was appointed concurrently as the Vice-Chancellor's Research and Knowledge Exchange Fellow(opens in new tab) and the Vice-Chancellor's Research Culture Fellow(opens in new tab), and was formally Director of Research Culture(opens in new tab) and Chair of the University Research Ethics Committee.
I joined the University in 2021 from the University of Leeds and have held several academic appointments, including those in Newcastle, where I studied for a PhD in clinical exercise physiology.
Teaching and supervision
I contribute to BSc (Hons) Biomedical Sciences.
Interests
We openly welcome enquiries from motivated and qualified applicants from all around the world who are interested in PhD study.
PhD projects aligned to the Northern Ophthalmic Research and Innovation (NORI) Institute focus on transforming routine retinal imaging into a scalable, data-driven platform for earlier detection of eye and systemic disease. Across all themes, NORI PhDs operate at the interface of biomedical imaging, health data science, clinical translation and digital infrastructure—working with large-scale linked datasets, NHS partners, and industry collaborators to move from methodological innovation to real-world deployment.
PhD students in NORI will work in a highly collaborative interdisciplinary environment, embedded across academia, healthcare, and industry, with the opportunity to undertake world-leading doctoral research and join a cohort of future leaders in health data sciences. Students will take part in a bespoke training programme, supported with networking events and tailored coaching, and take advantage of the research and placement opportunities provided by our range of external partners.
Our innovative, interdisciplinary PhD programmes are a collaboration between academics from across the University of Sunderland, Durham University, Newcastle University, and industry partners. Students will be based at the University of Sunderland, the host organisation of NORI, but working in close partnership and collaboration with Durham and Newcastle universities.
With an emphasis on research at the forefront of practice, NORI brings diverse specialists with a breadth of expertise that will enable you to develop a thematic lens to health data sciences that is aligned to your unique interests.
Current fully-funded PhD studentships opportunities and application details:
- Using artificial intelligence and eye images to improve health in people living with diabetes(opens in new tab)
- RETINA-Fair: Enabling FAIR retinal imaging data for early disease detection(opens in new tab).
Prospective PhD students are encouraged to contact me with a CV and a personal statement, explaining their motivations for applying and their research interests. We also welcome self-funding PhD applicants or those with scholarships from their home institutes and governments.
Research
The Northern Ophthalmic Research and Innovation (NORI) Institute is a pioneering interdisciplinary partnership led from the University of Sunderland in collaboration with Durham University, Newcastle University, the NHS, Sunderland City and South Tyneside Councils, and Fight for Sight.
NORI is built on a simple but powerful idea: the eye can reveal early signs of many serious diseases long before symptoms appear. Every year, millions of routine eye scans are taken across the NHS. We bring these scans together – securely and responsibly – with health and community data to create the world’s first joined-up, AI-ready system designed to predict, prevent, and detect disease earlier.
Based in a high-need, high-capability region and supported by major strategic investment, NORI establishes a signature and UK-first research capability that links routine eye imaging with wider NHS and civic datasets. This creates a powerful, secure research environment where scientists and clinicians can understand who is most at risk, how diseases develop over time, and which interventions work best for different communities.
Our work focuses on three core programmes:
- Prevention and population health – We use advanced imaging and data science to understand how diseases cluster and interact across communities, helping target prevention more fairly and effectively.
- Novel techniques for early diagnosis – We integrate and standardise data from different technologies and develop advanced analytical tools to detect hidden patterns and risks much earlier than is currently possible.
- Health beyond hospitals – We support the development of smaller, more affordable eye imaging devices and community-based diagnostic models, shifting care closer to home and enabling earlier monitoring and self-management.
Together, these programmes position NORI as a world-first platform for predictive and preventive healthcare.
In addition to my work in NORI, I lead/led programmes of discovery-to-deployment research in diabetes and its complications, with a particular interest in lifestyle intervention and treatment heterogeneity. This research has led to the development and refinement of (inter)national clinical guidelines, healthcare policy, and patient and healthcare professional education.
Areas of expertise
- Strategic leadership of an interdisciplinary multi-partner research institute and large-scale health innovation programmes involving:
- Leadership of AI-enabled retinal imaging, multimodal data science and secure health data infrastructure for early disease prediction
- Translational discovery-to-deployment pathways linking advanced analytics to clinically deployable tools and community-based innovation
- Population health modelling, health inequalities and place-based preventive healthcare.
- Research culture, governance, REF strategy, doctoral training and capacity building
- Multi-partner funding development across UKRI, NIHR, industry and philanthropic ecosystems.
Further information
My work most directly contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals 3, 9, 10 and 17: advancing Good Health and Well-being through earlier detection and prevention of chronic disease; building resilient digital health infrastructure and innovation ecosystems; reducing health inequalities through population-level risk modelling and community-embedded delivery; and strengthening cross-sector partnerships across academia, the NHS, civic authorities and industry. It also supports SDG 4 and 11 through doctoral training and place-based, sustainable models of care.