School of Infection & Immunity

Dr Rahul Kalla will join the School of Infection & Immunity in January 2027 after being awarded a prestigious Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowship worth £1.5 million over five years.

Currently a consultant gastroenterologist with NHS Lothian and an honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, Dr Kalla researches inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with a particular focus on how it develops and progresses.

The Kennedy Trust Senior Research Fellowships are the trust’s flagship awards, and Dr Kalla joins an impressive cohort of six previous awardees of this highly competitive scheme, which supports promising independent researchers in becoming future leaders in rheumatology and related musculoskeletal, immunological and inflammatory diseases.

This fellowship will support his research into inflammatory bowel disease-associated inflammatory arthritis, which affects around a third of people with IBD. By investigating why joint inflammation resolves in some people but persists in others, he hopes to improve our understanding of how the condition develops.

Dr Kalla, who will join Gut Translational Research Group led by Professor Gwo-tzer Ho when he takes up his post with Sii next year, plans to integrate dual-tracer full body PET/CT imaging with spatial transcriptomic technology.

By studying gut and joint tissue from the same people, the project aims to identify early biological changes shared across organs, providing insight into IBD-associated arthritis and immune-mediated inflammatory disease more broadly.

The work will build on his previous research during his MRC Clinical Academic Research Partnership (CARP) and National Research Scotland/Chief Scientist Office (NRS/CSO) fellowship, and key research projects funded by Crohn’s & Colitis UK.

On receiving the award, Dr Kalla said: “It is a real honour to receive the Kennedy Trust Senior Clinical Research Fellowship. I am hugely grateful to the Trust, my mentors and collaborators, and especially the patients who make our research possible.

“This fellowship gives me the opportunity to take my research beyond the gut and uncover the shared mechanisms driving inflammation in the gut and joints, with the ultimate goal of improving treatments and outcomes for our patients.”

Kennedy Trust CEO Dr Stephen Simpson added: “We are delighted that Rahul will be joining as our newest Senior Research Fellowship holder. Rahul’s research was regarded as highly competitive by the Fellowship award panel and the use of full body PET/CT imaging technology will offer new insights into understanding inflammatory bowel disease-associated inflammatory arthritis.

“We are delighted to welcome Rahul to the Trust’s network of funded researchers and following his progress as he continues to develop his research.”

On Dr Kalla joining Sii, Professor Ho said: "We are delighted to have Rahul, and his work will be a major advance to our work to understand and improve the management of people living with IBD."

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First published: 28 September 2026