Professor Newby has major interests in experimental medicine and the advanced imaging of cardiovascular disease including coronary heart disease, aortic stenosis and heart failure. He has held British Heart Foundation Programme Grants exploring the atherothrombotic effects of air pollution, and has interests in the interaction between cardiac and respiratory diseases. He has been involved in several multicentre trials and has played a major role in the conduct of the SALTIRE (Scottish Aortic stenosis Lipid lowering Trial, Impact on REgression) and 3CPO (Health Technology Assessment trial of non-invasive ventilation for acute cardiogenic pulmonary oedema) trials. He currently holds a BHF Programme Grant exploring non-invasive coronary atherothrombosis imaging. He is Chief Investigator for the SCOT-HEART trial funded by the Chief Scientist Office; a national multicentre randomised controlled trial of computed tomography coronary angiography in patients attending the Rapid Access Chest Pain Clinic. He is also Chief Investigator of the National Institute for Health Research Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation-funded MA3RS study: a multicentre trial of magnetic resonance imaging in abdominal aortic aneurysms. He is Chief Investigator of the Wellcome Trust-funded multicentre trial:Prediction of Recurrent Events with ¹⁸F-Fluoride to Identify Ruptured and High-risk Coronary Artery Plaques in Patients with Myocardial Infarction (PRE¹⁸FFIR) trial, and the British Heart Foundation funded Dual Antiplatelet Therapy in Acute Coronary Syndromes in Scotland Trial.

Professor David Newby graduated from the University of Southampton with a Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Medicine degree in 1991. He has worked in Edinburgh for over 20 years and obtained Doctorates in Medicine, Philosophy and Science. Professor Newby is British Heart Foundation John Wheatley Chair of Cardiology at the University of Edinburgh, Director of Research and Development for NHS Lothian, Director of the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, Director of the Clinical Research Imaging Centre, and a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. He is the recipient of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award.

For his research, Professor Newby was awarded the British Association of Pharmaceutical Physicians’ Prize, the Croom Lectureship (Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh), the BUPA research award for the best emerging clinical researcher in the UK, the John French Award (British Atherosclerosis Society), the Goodall-Strickland Medal (British Cardiovascular Society), the Parmley Prize (American College of Cardiology) and BMJ Research Awards 2014. He has written several successful educational books that have received major national awards (British Medical Association Book Awards, Highly Commended: Coronary Heart Disease: Your Questions Answered; Society of Authors, First Prize (Richard Asher Prize): Cardiology: An Illustrated Coloured Text). For his research, he and the British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science were awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize 2014-2016, and the British Medical Journal Imaging Team of the Year 2017.

Professor Newby is Associate Editor of Heart and Chair for the development of the Scottish Intercollegiate Guideline Network (SIGN) guidelines for the management of acute coronary syndromes.