Kennedy Lees is Professor of Cerebrovascular Medicine at the University of Glasgow, UK, and Director of the Acute Stroke Unit in the Western Infirmary in Glasgow 1990-2015. His research interests include acute neuroprotection and thrombolysis for stroke, stroke trial design and secondary prevention, including blood pressure manipulation and AF detection. He has extensive experience with translational medicine in relation to stroke treatment. Recent research has concerned choice of outcome measures for stroke trials, the training of investigators in their use (such as the Rankin training programme) and the optimal analysis approaches.
Professor Lees has helped coordinate multicentre stroke trials including PROGRESS, ASSIST, MAST-E and CARESS, and acted as chief investigator for the GAIN-International, IMAGES, SAINT I and MACSI trials. He leads the Virtual International Stroke Trial Archive (VISTA) group, chaired the SAINT and CHANT Trials’ Steering Committee, is a past chairman of the European Stroke Council and is President of the European Stroke Organisation. He has chaired data monitoring committees for acute stroke trials including ICTUS, DIAS, ASSIST, mRECT trials, ECASS 3 and NEST-3. He chairs the outcomes committees for trials including the NIH-funded CLEAR-3 and MISTIE-3 trials, EU FP7-funded EuroHyp-1 and PRECIOUS trials, SITS-OPEN and CREGS-S. He is European associate Editor for Stroke. He is a member of the Scientific Steering committee and UK Coordinator for the Safe Implementation of Thrombolysis in Stroke (SITS) collaboration, and helps lead pooled individual patient analysis of iv thrombolysis trials and thrombectomy trials in stroke.
As President of the European Stroke Organisation, Professor Lees was chairman of the first ESO Conference, held in Glasgow in April 2015 and will lead the second ESO Conference to be held in Barcelona in May 2016.