Professor Holm Uhlig

Professor Holm Uhlig is a paediatric gastroenterologist in Oxford, leading the NIHR Paediatric IBD BioResource. His research interests are IBD pathogenesis, particularly genetics and immunology of intestinal inflammation. He has a special interest in monogenic disorders that cause immunodeficiency and mucosal barrier function. The key aim of his work is the translation of genetic findings from research into clinical practice.

Holm has been Director of the Centre for Human Genetics since August 2024.

Associate Professor Angeliki Kerasidou

Angeliki Kerasidou is an associate professor at the Ethox Centre and research fellow at the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities, University of Oxford.

Dr Kerasidou is the Director of the Caroline Miles and Andrew Markus Scholarship Schemes for the Ethox Centre, Vice-Chair of the Independent Ethics Committee of International Agency for Research on Cancer (IEC IARC), Member of the Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC).

She is Ethics Advisor for a number of EU-funded projects. In the past, she served as the Ethics Manager for the MalariaGEN Independent Data Access Committee (IDAC), and was member of the Oxford Tropical Research Ethics Committee (OxTREC), and of the ELSI Group for the 1000 Genomes Project. She is also fellow at Reuben College where she leads the Ethics and Values Theme. She studied theology and philosophy in Greece, Germany and the UK, and received her DPhil in 2009 from Oxford University.

CURRENT RESEARCH

Angeliki’s research focuses on ethical issues that arise from the introduction of new technologies to, and the effect of socio-economic changes, on biomedical research and clinical practice. Using philosophical analysis and empirical research, she is examining the ways in which these factors impact on the theory and the practice of professional ethics for biomedical researchers and healthcare staff.

In her current project, Dr Kerasidou examines the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI) in population health. She is particularly interested in the ways in which AI’s capacity for greater accuracy and efficiency can impact on trust, both relational and epistemic. For example, she is investigating the relationship between accuracy, efficiency and trust in the use of AI tools that rely on surveillance data. She is also researching how AI could disrupt the understanding and practice of traditional healthcare values of empathy and compassion, at an individual and systemic level. She is leading an international collaboration exploring how to build empathetic healthcare systems, including the role of AI in such efforts.

Dr Padraig Dixon

Dr Padraig Dixon is Senior Researcher in Health Economics at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford. He is also a Research Fellow at Reuben College, Oxford, and Associate Director in Health Economics for the Central and South Genomic Medicine Service Alliance.  He has degrees in Economics from Trinity College, University of Dublin (BA) and Nuffield College, Oxford (MPhil and DPhil), and in Health Economics from the University of York (MSc).

His research interests relate to economic issues associated with the increasing availability of genetic data, particularly in relation to how these data might be used to support causal inference, screening, prognostic modelling, and the evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of stratified therapies.

Before returning to Oxford, he held a personal Medical Research Council Skills Development Fellowship at the Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol. He also spent several years as an economic consultant in the private sector, advising regulators, governments, and large corporations on economic issues related to the regulation of network industries

Professor Sarah Wordsworth

Professor Sarah Wordsworth joined the Health Economics Research Centre in January 2003 and developed a research programme on the economics of genetic and genomic technologies, which in particular explores the economics of translating high-throughput sequencing technologies such as whole-genome sequencing in rare diseases and cancer into health care systems.

Her other research interests include antimicrobial resistance. She also addresses methodological challenges in trial-based economic evaluations in the areas of surgery for obesity, lung cancer surgery, cardiovascular disease and eye disease.
Sarah undertakes policy work and leads the Health Economics Genomics England Clinical Interpretation Partnership (GeCIP). for the UK’s 100,000 Genomes Project.

As a Senior Fellow at St Anne’s College, Sarah is a member of the college Governing Body and graduate advisor for DPhil and MSc students.

Professor Simon Leedham

Professor Simon Leedham researches the morphogenic signalling pathways that control the intestinal stem cell in homeostasis, regeneration and cancer, and he has published more than 90 peer reviewed papers in journals that include Nature Medicine, Nature Genetics, Cell Stem Cell, Gastroenterology and Gut. 

His work has been recognised by the United European Gastroenterology Rising Star award in 2010, the British Society of Gastroenterology Francis Avery Jones research prize in 2015 and the CRUK future leaders prize in 2017.

In 2012, Simon obtained an Honorary Consultant Gastroenterologist position in Oxford University Hospitals. He remains clinically active, completing one day of clinical practice a week and has established a gastroenterologist led family cancer clinic and endoscopy screening service in the hospital. He is also leading an Oxford Translational Gastroenterology Unit initiative to be the first unit in the country to offer universal patient consent, tissue and data collection from endoscopy.

Simon was Director of the CPM from 2016 to 2021.

Professor Catherine Pope

Catherine Pope is Professor of Medical Sociology in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.  She is also a senior research fellow at Green Templeton College, an NIHR Senior Investigator and was made Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2016. She is an expert in qualitative and mixed methods for applied health research, and a key contributor to developing methods for evidence synthesis. Catherine has published empirical, theoretical, and methodological work, including over 160 peer reviewed journal and conference papers for clinical, sociological, policy and practitioner audiences.

Professor Julia Hippisley-Cox

Julia qualified with distinction from Sheffield University Medical School in 1989 where she was awarded the Prize in Medicine, Surgery, General Practice and Obstetrics and Gynaecology. In 1995 she was awarded a distinction in the MRCGP examination and awarded FRCGP in 2005. She became a Member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1994, and a Fellow in 2013. She was appointed as Lecturer at the University of Nottingham in 1995, Senior Lecturer in 1999, Reader in 2004. She was promoted to Professor of Clinical Epidemiology & General Practice in 2005 where she stayed until her appointment at the University of Oxford.

Julia’s research interests are very broad and include large scale clinical epidemiology, drug safety and the development of risk prediction algorithms using electronic databases from general practices. She is the co-founder of the QResearch database (www.qresearch.org) which is one of the largest clinical research databases worldwide. Since 2012, it has doubled in size to over 30 million patient records and is also linked to hospital, mortality & cancer data. She has developed and validated risk prediction algorithms for a range of diseases including cardiovascular disease, cancer fracture, diabetes and other conditions. These tools are now widely used across the NHS.

Dr Zoi Alexopoulou

Dr Zoi Alexopoulou is a doctor in neurology and a neuroscientist. She studied at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford for both for her medical degree and for her DPhil (PhD) in Clinical Neurosciences. She is a lecturer at St Anne’s and a Clinical Director in MSD. Her expertise lies in the pathophysiology and new drug development in neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases. In MSD, she is responsible for translational drug development as well as for running global clinical trials in neurology, infectious diseases (eg. antiviral drugs) and other medical specialties. She is an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Helen King

In 1986, after studying Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Anne’s College, Oxford, Helen King joined the Cheshire Constabulary as a Police Constable. Over 19 years she worked her way from foot patrol in Chester City Centre through a wide range of uniformed and detective roles, including periods as a Senior Investigating Officer, Borough Commander and Head of the Professional Standards Department. In 2005, Helen transferred to Merseyside Police as an Assistant Chief Constable, where she was introduced new approaches to strengthen public confidence and victim satisfaction including police involvement in Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture in 2008; she also commanded many firearms and public order operations and chaired most of the Force’s misconduct panels.

She was awarded the Queen’s Police Medal in the New Year’s Honours list 2011. In April 2012, Helen returned to Cheshire Constabulary as the Deputy Chief Constable and in 2014 moved to the Metropolitan Police Service as Assistant Commissioner for Territorial Policing, with responsibility for policing in London’s 32 Boroughs, Roads Policing and Criminal Justice (a total of over 20,000 police officers). In April 2016, she held the position of Assistant Commissioner for Professionalism, which includes responsibility for Training and Professional Standards. Having retired after more than thirty years as a police officer, Helen was honoured to become the first police officer to head an Oxbridge College when she returned to St Anne’s as Principal in April 2017.

Associate Professor Francis Szele

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.