Samantha Walker

    Director of Research and Innovation
    Asthma + Lung UK

    Samantha leads Asthma + Lung UK’s research and innovation division, overseeing our own research and innovation spending and constantly pushing for better treatments and innovative technologies to support everyone with a respiratory condition. She’s passionate about ensuring more research spend is directed towards respiratory research and innovation and that patients are involved in research to maximise the chances of them benefitting from it. Samantha led a successful pan-European, multi-sector consortia to identify asthma research priorities and was the architect of the world-leading Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research. She advises and supports several high value-high impact respiratory research collaborations across the UK to ensure the findings add impact and value to the patient population involved. Samantha joined Asthma UK in 2011. A nurse by training, she did a science PhD at Imperial College London and maintains her research activity through active participation in cutting edge research programmes across the UK. She has published extensively on asthma and allergy for over 25 years in high impact research journals.