Prof Paul Wilkinson’s main job is Clinical Dean at the University of Cambridge, directing the Clinical Medicine course.  Some major priorities of his work include improving integration within this complex course; improving support for students; and improving Equity, Diversity and Inclusion – for our students, their future patients and our staff.  An important component of this is improving awareness of, and support for students and staff with, neurodiversity, across the university.

Prof Wilkinson is also Professor of Youth Mental Health, conducting research in the epidemiology and treatment of self-harm and depression, in adolescents and young adults.  He also conducts research in clinical education, in particular racism in medical education.

Prof Wilkinson works as an Honorary Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust Paediatric Psychology Service in Cambridge.  In this, he mainly carries out assessments of the complex mental health needs of children and adolescents with physical health problems.

Dr Amy Orben is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She leads an internationally recognised research programme investigating the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence. She routinely advises policymakers and public servants around the world, for example as Director of a 2025 UK Government independent research commission on this topic and as a member of the Science Advisory Council at the UK Department for Education.

Dr Orben completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She has received a range of prestigious awards including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award (2024), Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022) and the British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research (2019). She also received the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award (2020) for her work to improve scientific practice and research culture in her field.

Professor Tamsin Ford is an internationally renowned Child Psychiatric Epidemiologist who researches the organisation, delivery, and effectiveness of services and interventions for children and young people’s mental health.

Her work is inherently translational and cross-disciplinary, and focuses on how to promote mental health, prevent mental ill-health and respond effectively to children and young people who are currently struggling. After completing her PhD at the Institute of Psychiatry, Kings College London, she moved to Exeter University Medical School in 2007, where she helped to recruit mental health researchers working across the life-span in addition to developing a thriving Child Mental Health Research Group. 

Tamsin’s research covers the full range of psychopathology and agencies, practitioners and interventions that relate to the mental health of children and young people. Her work has direct relevance to policy, commissioning and practice. She led the clinical rating for the national child mental health survey, which provided child mental health statistics for the NHS Plan. 

Tamsin was awarded a CBE for services to Psychiatry in 2019. She provides research advice to Place2Be and is a board member of ACAMH.