Professor Monica Busse

Professor Monica Busse is a chartered physiotherapist, and trials methodologist based in the Centre for Trials Research (CTR) at Cardiff University. She was appointed as the Director of the new Health and Care Research Wales Faculty, set up to make sure health and social care researchers have the right training and support to develop their careers. She is Director of Mind, Brain and Neuroscience Trials and a Health and Care Research Wales Senior Research Leader. Her undergraduate degree was in Physiotherapy and she has further post-graduate qualifications in Biomedical Sciences (Ergonomics) and Biomechanics. Her PhD was in human movement sciences and neurology with much of her research focussing on clinical neurology and neuroscience setting applied to allied health and care research.

Monica has a longstanding interest in research methodology. She was awarded an NIHR/Health and Care Research Wales post-doctoral fellowship in 2013 and used this opportunity to progress her formal training in trials methods and was awarded a Diploma in Clinical Trials from LSHTM in 2017.

Monica has a specific interest in the development and evaluation of complex interventions across the life span and developing in-depth understanding of intervention components (including that specific to physical activity behaviour change techniques) required to inform appropriate assessment of outcomes in complex health conditions and across clinical settings. Over the last 10 years, she has been and continues to be principal investigator in a series of multi-centre observational and interventional studies related to physical activity, cognitive training and mobility in Huntington’s Disease (HD) many of which informed the publication of the first evidenced based international physiotherapy clinical guidelines for HD.

Monica has conducted studies of mobility and falls in muscular dystrophy, mobility assessments in Multiple Sclerosis and the role of neural feedback in people with Parkinson’s disease where her expertise in outcome measures and physical training is informing both intervention delivery and assessment of mobility. Her expertise in applied biomechanics, functional and clinical assessment and the use of technology to assess community level activity is applied in trials in rare diseases (primarily Huntington’s Disease but more recently extending to a range of rare neurological diseases) and utilising relatively novel designs including trials within cohorts.

Monica has a longstanding commitment to public and patient involvement and coproduction in research and established BRAIN Involve, the public involvement arm of the Wales Brain unit. She has active collaborations with researchers and clinicians working across a variety of health service settings (for example orthopaedics, critical care and autism spectrum disorder). 

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In the news:

New personal award schemes launched through Health and Care Research Wales Faculty (June 2023)

Faculty Learning and Development Day (April 2023)

Recipients of 2022 NHS Research Time Awards announced (March 2023)

New Research Development Advisor roles to help deliver researcher development initiatives (February 2023)

International Day of Women and Girls in Science (February 2023)

Health and Care Research Wales Faculty inaugural conference (December 2022)

Health and Care Research Wales Faculty: “one of the most important initiatives Health and Care Research Wales has set up” (November 2022)

Study to support people living with long Covid (November 2022) 

£16 million European collaboration aims to improve quality of life for people with neurodegenerative diseases (November 2022)

New Health and Care Research Wales Faculty Director appointed (May 2022)

Health and Care Research Wales invests in leaders across Wales to shape the research of the future (April 2022)

Welsh researchers investigating long Covid as part of UK-wide £20 million funding call (July 2021)