Rate My Professor Katie Gillies

Professor Katie Gillies is an MRC Senior Non-Clinical Fellow and Professor at the University of Aberdeen, affiliated with the Aberdeen Centre for Evaluation and the Health Services Research Unit in the Institute of Applied Health Sciences, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition. She serves as Director of the Health Care Assessment Programme within the Health Services Research Unit. Her primary research specializations encompass trials methodology, informed consent processes, participant retention strategies, and behaviour change interventions in clinical trials. Gillies leads methodological research focused on participant-centred trials, aiming to enhance recruitment, retention, and overall trial efficiency through evidence-based approaches.

Gillies has secured a prestigious £1.7 million Medical Research Council Fellowship in 2023 to advance her work in trial methodology. She co-leads a major initiative to decarbonise clinical trials, announced in 2025, which seeks to reduce the carbon footprint of healthcare research. As Chief Investigator or key leader, she oversees projects such as BOOST (ongoing), ELICIT, STEER, BadRaP, I-TRAC (completed), TRIP (implementation of trial methods research), PACT (patient-centred trials, ongoing), PoINT (public involvement in numerical aspects of trials), and Greener Trials: Building the evidence base to improve the environmental sustainability of healthcare research. Her influential publications include 'Behavioural approaches to recruitment and retention in clinical trials: a systematic review' (BMJ Open, 2022), 'Carbon emissions associated with clinical trials: a scoping review' (Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, 2025), 'Testing approaches to sharing trial results with participants: a mixed methods study' (Patient Education and Counseling, 2021), and 'Analysis of patient information leaflets (PILs) used in clinical trials using the Informed Consent Evaluation instrument' (2011). With over 4,700 citations and an h-index of 33 on Google Scholar, her contributions have shaped practices in clinical trial design and conduct.