Professor Mona Bafadhel, completed medical training at the University of Birmingham, followed by training at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital and The Royal Brompton Hospital. Mona is a clinical researcher, working in the Nuffield Department of Medicine as an Associate Professor in Respiratory Medicine at the University of Oxford and an Honorary Respiratory Consultant Physician at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Her interests in Respiratory Medicine led to specialist training in the Oxford deanery and subsequently gaining a PhD at the University of Leicester studying biomarkers in exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). In 2019, Mona was awarded the prestigious Gaulstonian Lectureship from the Royal College of Physicians, London. She is the 4^th woman and 1^st woman from an ethnic minority in the awards 350-year-old history to have received this for excellence in the Clinical Sciences. Mona leads a group with research interests in the field of Airways Disease, particularly the investigation of the mechanisms underlying exacerbations of COPD. This has led to studying the role of the eosinophil in COPD, using statistical approaches to define particular sub-groups and to the delivery of novel therapeutic strategies to patients, working across the translational spectrum. Her work on the peripheral blood eosinophil in COPD has influenced international guidance and is now routinely used managing patients with COPD. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mona observed that in the early Wuhan severe hospitalised COVID-19 cohort, asthma and COPD was an infrequent comorbidity and she hypothesised this was related to inhaled corticosteroids having a protective effect. To test this hypothesis, she undertook the STOIC trial, testing the effect of inhaled budesonide in patients with early COVID-19 infection. The results were highly supportive and her findings have been replicated in the national UK PRINCIPLE platform and are also now part of national and international guidance.