Professor Aithal has been a Consultant Hepatobiliary Physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS trust since 2001. He is the Head of the NIHR Nottingham Digestive Diseases Biomedical Research Centre, and the Head of Division for the Nottingham Digestive Diseases Centre, University of Nottingham. He is also a Professor of Hepatology at The University of Nottingham.

Professor Aithal’s interests centre around translational research in the following areas:

• Drug-induced liver injury (causality assessment, outcome, genetic and environmental factors that affect drug metabolism and hepatotoxicity).
• Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (mechanisms, biomarkers, lifestyle and pharmacological interventions).
• Epidemiology of liver and biliary disease (cause and consequences)
• Hepatobiliary imaging (quantitative magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate chronic liver disease, novel techniques to assess the degree of liver injury and impairment of function).

His future research plans include the following:

• Quantitative and dynamic MRI techniques in chronic liver disease
• Dietary, life style and genetic factors associated with the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
• Mechanisms and efficacy evaluation of interventions in NASH
• Identification, development and validation of markers of liver injury