UK Biobank: Scale, Depth, Duration... But, Most Importantly, Accessibility

Sir Rory Collins is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the Clinical Trial Service Unit within the University of Oxford, the head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health and a Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. His work has been in the establishment of large-scale epidemiological studies of the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, other vascular disease, and cancer, while also being closely involved in developing approaches to the combination of results from related studies ("meta-analyses").

Since September 2005, he has been the Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of the UK Biobank, a prospective study of 500,000 British people aged 40-69 at recruitment. He has created and led large studies that transformed statins from esoteric drugs for familial hypercholesterolemia into widely-used generics that prevent millions of heart attacks and ischemic strokes annually. Sir Collins was knighted in 2011 for services to science. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2004) and Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) (2015).