People
The strategic direction of the Centre for Personalised Medicine is guided by a Steering Group and External Advisory Board, bringing together leaders from a breadth of backgrounds. The CPM is run day-to-day by Catherine Lidbetter, Programme Co-ordinator and Thea Perry, Administrative Officer.
Steering Group
 |
Professor Simon Leedham, Associate Professor of Gastroenterology and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science at the Wellcome Centre Human Genetics. Simon was appointed as the Director of the CPM in May 2016. His research focuses on the morphogen signaling pathways that control intestinal stem cell fate in intestinal homeostasis, regeneration and cancer. He is also co-investigator on the S-CORT: Stratification in Colorectal Cancer trial. He won the United European Gastroenterology Rising Star Award in 2010, the British Society of Gastroenterology Sir Francis Avery Jones Research prize in 2015 and the Cancer Research UK Future Leaders prize in 2017 for his research. He has published more than 45 peer review articles in the field in journals including Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Cell Reports, Gastroenterology and Gut. |
 |
Professor Peter Donnelly, Director of the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, Professor of Statistical Science and Fellow of St Anne’s College. Peter directs the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University, a world-leading centre where researchers are gaining new insights into genetic inheritance and exploring the genetic relationships underpinning health and disease. A mathematician who collaborates with biologists, Peter specialises in applying probability and statistics to the field of genetics, aiming to unravel our evolutionary history and the structure of the human genome. He applies statistical methods to real-world problems, ranging from DNA analysis to the treatment of genetic disorders and bringing insights to our origins. |
 |
Helen King, Principal of St Anne's College. Helen has been Principal since April 2017. Her previous career was as a police officer, serving with the Cheshire Constabulary, the Merseyside Police and the Metropolitan Police, where most recently she was Assistant Commissioner for Professionalism, which included responsibility for Training and Professional Standards. Helen is an alumna of St Anne's College, having studied PPE in the 1980s before joining the Police under its Graduate Entry Scheme. |
 |
Dr David Harris, Fellow and Tutor in Biochemistry, St Anne’s College. David carried out his DPhil research at the University of Amsterdam and returned to Oxford to take up the Weir Junior Research Fellow at University College. After a University lectureship at Leeds University, where he taught until 1986, he returned to Oxford to take up the EP Abraham Cephalosporin Fellowship in Biochemistry at St Anne’s. He is Director of Teaching in the Biochemistry department in Oxford and responsible for the design and organisation of the Biochemistry course. He also plays an active role with the Biochemical Society (UK) on their Education Committee. |
 |
Dr Cecilia Lindgren, Senior Research Fellow at St Anne's College, Senior Group Leader at the Big Data Institute, University of Oxford & Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Cecilia's group's work focuses on the genetic landscape of Type 2 Diabetes, obesity and fat distribution. She looks at applying genetics and genomics to dissect the etiology of obesity-related traits and their correlation with (female) reproductive health. The research seeks to advance understanding of the mechanisms involved in obesity and the regulation of differential central fat accumulation in the belief that an appreciation of these mechanisms will complement advances in understanding of overall energy balance. |
 |
Dr Gabriele De Luca, Clinician-scientist in Clinical Neurology at the University of Oxford. Gabriele completed his neurology training at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA where he was chief resident and assistant professor of neurology. His doctoral studies at the University of Oxford, supported by a Clarendon Scholarship, investigated the neuropathology and genetics of multiple sclerosis (MS). Gabriele’s research focuses on genetic-pathologic correlations in MS. He is also interested in the relationship between inflammation and neurodegeneration in MS and other neurodegenerative diseases. |
|
|
Dr Ingrid Slade, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow, The Ethox Centre, University of Oxford & Specialist Registrar in Public Health, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Ingrid is a public health physician with a background in clinical and molecular genetics, based at the Ethox Centre, a multidisciplinary bioethics research centre at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on themes arising in the implementation and integration of genomic medicine across the national healthcare setting including the role of commercialisation, resource allocation / priority setting and the application of public health ethics to clinical genomic medicine. |
|
|
Dr Francis Szele, Fellow and Tutor in Developmental Neurobiology, St Anne's College. Francis has a BS in Biology (the College of William and Mary, Virginia, 1985) and PhD in Pharmacology (University of Pennsylvania, 1994). He undertook Postdoctoral research in developmental neurobiology at Harvard Medical School from 1994 to 1999 before becoming an Assistant Professor at the Northwestern University Medical School, Chicago, a position he held until 2007. He moved to Oxford in 2007 to take up a post as University Lecturer in Biomedical Science at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, also becoming a Tutorial Fellow in Developmental Neurobiology at St Anne’s College. |
|
|
Dr Jason Torres, Postdoctoral Research Scientist in Disease Gene Regulation and Junior Research Fellow at St Anne’s College. Jason completed his doctoral training (PhD in Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition) at the University of Chicago where he investigated the influence of regulatory genetic variants on type 2 diabetes. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics, Jason works to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying diabetes and glycemic traits by integrating genetic, transcriptomic, epigenetic, and chromatin interaction data from human pancreas and insulin-responsive peripheral tissues. |
External Advisory Board
Dame Mary Archer (Chair) Chairman of the Science Museum Group
Professor Sir John Bell FRS HonFREng PMedSci Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford
Professor Geert Blijham Former Chairman of the Board of Directors and Vice-Dean of UMC Utrecht
Professor Gary Ford CBE Chief Executive of the Oxford Academic Health Science Network
Tim Gardam Chief Executive of the Nuffield Foundation and former Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford
Richard Girling Chief Executive of Centerview Partners Europe
Helen King Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford
Professor Dennis Lo FRS Director of the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
Dr Magdalena Skipper Editor in Chief, Nature Communications
Dr Ron Zimmern Chairman of the Public Health Genetics (PHG) Foundation’s Board of Trustees
The Centre for Personalised Medicine has been established thanks to a generous benefaction from The Dr Stanley Ho Medical Development Foundation in Macau, Hong Kong.