The UK Biobank Executive Team consists of:

Professor Sir Rory Collins
Dr Tim Peakman
Dr Cathie Sudlow
Paul Downey
Jonathan Sellors
Pamela Moore
Andrew Trehearne

Professor Sir Rory Collins, Chief Executive Officer & Principal Investigator

Rory Collins was appointed Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank in September 2005. Rory qualified in medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, in 1981 and obtained BSc in statistics from George Washington University, Washington DC in 1977 and MSc in statistics from the University of Oxford in 1983. In 1985, he became co-director, with Professor Sir Richard Peto, of the University of Oxford’s Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU). In 1996 he was appointed Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford, supported by the British Heart Foundation. 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”). CTSU was awarded a Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2006 for its research contributions to public health. In 2011, Rory was knighted for his Services to Science.

Dr Tim Peakman, Executive Director

Tim Peakman is Executive Director for UK Biobank and has overall responsibility for the day-to-day running of the organisation. Tim started work at UK Biobank in April 2004 as the Director of Operations. With ten years experience as a research scientist in the pharmaceutical industry and four as a management consultant in drug discovery, Tim brings a wide knowledge and experience to UK Biobank. As a consultant, at PricewaterhouseCoopers, he advised pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies on a variety of projects addressing productivity of early drug discovery pipelines. He has published extensively on transferring industrialisation process and methodology from other industries and on implementing management disciplines to the biomedical environment. UK Biobank has been built on these principles of industrialisation. In the pharmaceutical industry, Tim worked on humanising monoclonal antibodies for the treatment of HIV and autoimmune disease. Later his research focused on the molecular events leading to epilepsy and pain. He completed his doctoral studies on bacterial anaerobic gene regulation at the University of Birmingham in 1988 and his MBA at Henley Management College. Tim is a member of advisory boards for the Ontario Health Study, The American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Study, the Helmholtz (German) Biobank, The Healing Foundation’s Cleft Lip and Palette Gene Bank and the Understanding Society study. He is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Genomic Epidemiology at the University of Manchester. In 2011, Tim was awarded the inaugural Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Visiting Fellowship at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne.

Dr Cathie Sudlow, Chief Scientist

Dr Cathie Sudlow joined UK Biobank as Chief Scientist and Senior Epidemiologist in October 2011. She is Clinical Reader and Honorary Consultant Neurologist at the University of Edinburgh. She qualified in medicine at the University of Oxford in 1991. Since 1994, she has pursued a clinical academic career, with substantial personal fellowship support from the Wellcome Trust, continuing throughout to be clinically active, particularly in neurology and stroke medicine. She completed an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1997, and a DPhil on meta-analyses of randomised trials of anti-platelet therapy at the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit in Oxford in 2000. Since 2001 her main base has been the Division of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Edinburgh, where she has developed her research interests in epidemiology, genetics and prevention of stroke. She is a member of the Prevention Studies Group of the National Institutes of Health Research Stroke Research Network, as well as chair of the Association of British Neurologists stroke section and the British Association of Stroke Physicians scientific committee. She is also an active member of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium.

Paul Downey, Operations Director

Paul Downey joined UK Biobank in 2004 as Director of Operations to lead the implementation and on-going management of the clinical and laboratory operations. He established the organisation’s ISO9001:2008 quality assurance and ISO27001 Information security accreditations. Paul has fostered strategic partnerships with organisations to develop the technologies required to meet the unique challenges presented by the UK Biobank project. A number of these innovations have been successfully commercialised. The automated laboratory processing systems won the 2008 North West Innovation in Engineering Award, and the archive facility was also a finalist in the Royal Academy of Engineering’s 2008 MacRobert Award for innovation. Paul graduated in 1998 with an honours degree in Biological Sciences jointly awarded by the University of Lancaster and University of Florida. He attained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Leicester in 2008, and an MSc in Major Programme Management from the University of Oxford in 2011.

Jonathan Sellors, Legal Counsel

Jonathan is the legal counsel and company secretary of UK Biobank.  He is also a partner of Finers Stephens Innocent LLP and is an expert in intellectual property, life sciences and data protection law.

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Pamela Moore, Finance Consultant

Pamela Moore joined UK Biobank in April 2011 as Finance Consultant.  She is a Chartered Accountant, who prior to joining UK Biobank was the Finance Director of an international manufacturing company.  Before moving into industry, Pamela was a Senior Manager at KPMG where her portfolio included clients from the not-for-profit sector and owner-managed businesses, for whom she provided audit, accounting and taxation services.

Andrew Trehearne, Head of Communications

Andrew Trehearne joined UK Biobank shortly before recruitment began in 2007. He has worked extensively within the health communications sector, most notably at the Leukaemia Research Fund (LRF), Imperial Cancer Research Fund and World Cancer Research Fund. AT LRF he was involved in a number of high-profile events, including the Ian Botham Walks, and the launch of the enormously successful Alternative WI Calendar. He also spent much of his time bringing pioneering science to the public’s attention.