Mrs Heather Sloan,
Executive Manager

Heather Sloan is a former State Registered Nurse and Midwife. In 1976 she was admitted to Hospital haemorrhaging through an ectopic pregnancy during which she had a near death experience. It was not until the late 1980's that she discovered that her experience had been given this title.

After reading an article in 'The Tablet" written by Dr. Parnia, she answered his request for more people to write of their personal experiences and related her occurrence. Subsequent to this she has been assisting the team with the administrative side of the research. She almost single hardheadedly managed all the extensive administration affairs of this organization between 2000 and 2003, and also provided much relief to many people who needed to discuss their near death experiences with someone who 'truly understood'.

Dr Sam Parnia,
Chairman & Trustee

Dr Sam Parnia is a graduate of Guys and St. Thomas' medical schools in London. .He is currently a fellow in Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine at Weill Cornell Medical Centre, In New York. He also holds an honorary position as Senior Clinical Research Fellow at the University of Southampton in the UK where he heads the Consciousness Research Group and is a Specialist Registrar in Internal and Respiratory Medicine in North West Thames Region in London. His past positions have been at The Hammersmith Hospital, London and Southampton University working towards a PhD in the molecular biology of asthma. He was a member of the Southampton University Trust Hospitals resuscitation committee between 1998 and 1999.

While working on the medical and coronary care units of Southampton General Hospitals and together with Dr Peter Fenwick he set up the first ever study of near death experiences in the UK. The results of this study have received widespread coverage in the national and international press and have been published in the medical journal "Resuscitation".

Dr Peter Fenwick,
President & Trustee

Dr Peter Fenwick is Consultant Neuropsychiatrist emeritus to the Epilepsy Unit at the Maudsley Hospital which he ran for twenty years. He is presently appointed as a Senior Lecturer, at the Institute of Psychiatry; a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist, at The Radcliffe Infirmary Oxford; an Honorary Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist, at Broadmoor Hospital. He is a past Chairman of the Scientific and Medical Network and is Chairman, of the Research Committee, for the Foundation for Integrated Medicine.

Dr Fenwick has had a long standing interest in brain function, the relationship of the mind and the brain, and the problem of consciousness. He has an extensive research record and has published over two hundred papers in medical and scientific journals. He is widely regarded as an authority on the subject of Near Death Experiences and the mind brain problem.

Mr David Lorimer
Vice President & Trustee

David Lorimer was educated at Eton and the Universities of St Andrews and Cambridge. After a spell in merchant banking and a year reading and working on the continent he went to Cambridge to study education and spent a number of years teaching modern languages and philosophy at Fettes College and Winchester College before becoming Director of the Scientific and Medical Network in 1986.

He has recently relinquished this post and is now a consultant to the Network and continues as Editor of Network. Chair of Wrekin Trust (a charity devoted to adult spiritual education) and of the All Hallows House Foundation for research in complementary medicine. He is also the current President of the Swedenborg Society.

Mr John Tomlinson
Trustee

John Tomlinson, a Canadian, is an Oxford based economist. He studied business administration at Florida State University in America and practiced as a stockbroker with Thomson & McKinnon, a member of the New York Stock Exchange. Having experienced what he refers to as "an extension of the range of my conscious awareness" for a prolonged period in 1974. He set out to learn more about what is often referred to as religious, peak or spiritual experiences.

John Tomlinson came across the work of Sir Alister Hardy on consciousness and in 1985 he helped to launch the Alister Hardy Centre (USA) Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey in an attempt to build an Oxford-Princeton axis to study the implications of Hardy's work on our understandings of 'consciousness'.