Omar Usmani leads the Clinical Research Group within the Airway Disease Section at NHLI. His clinical research is focussed on asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic cough. His research disciplines are in inhaled drug delivery, lung imaging, small airways pathophysiology, respiratory pharmacology, and digital respiratory health.
He is Vice-Chair of Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL), a Board member of International Society of Aerosols in Research (ISAM), and a steering committee member of the Small Airways Working Group of the World Allergy Organization (WAO). He is also Associate Editor to the journal Respiration and on the Editorial Board of COPD: Journal of the COPD Foundation.
In 2012, Dr Usmani was awarded a UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Career Development Fellowship to investigate the lung deposition of inhaled bronchodilator aerosols of different particle size within the airways of patients with COPD. This is the first time this award category was been given to Respiratory Science research in the UK.
He is currently clinical lead and co-PI at Imperial College on a highly prestigious EU Horizon 20-20 consortium project, myaircoach, focussing on the role of tele-monitoring and e-health in asthma self-management, where the proposal was ranked 4th highest of all 256 submissions to the call.
In 2015, he was awarded one of the highest accolades in aerosol science, the Thomas T Mercer Award from the American Association of Aerosol Research (AAAR) and ISAM, recognising his international research excellence in pharmaceutical aerosols and inhalable materials.