A board of directors, accountable to the members of the company (the Medical Research Council and The Wellcome Trust), act as company directors and as charity trustees. They have overall responsibility for the direction, management and control of UK Biobank Limited. The Board is chaired by Sir Mike Rawlins, also Chairman of the National Institute of Health & Clinical Excellence.
Board members:
Sir Michael Rawlins
Professor Danny Altmann
Ms Simone Bayes
Mr Peter Benson
Ms Tara Camm
Dr Peter Craig
Dr Wendy Ewart
Professor Sir Andy Haines
Professor Andrew Hattersley
Professor Bill Ollier
Mr Jonathan Sellors is Board Secretary.
Sir Michael Rawlins
Sir Michael Rawlins has been chairman of the National Institute of Health & Clinical Excellence (NICE) since its formation in 1999. He is president-elect of the Royal Society of Medicine and assumes office in July 2012. He is also an Honorary Professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, University of London, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He was the Ruth and Lionel Jacobson Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne from 1973 to 2006 .At the same time he held the position of consultant physician and consultant clinical pharmacologist to the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust. He was vice-chairman (1987-1992) and chairman (1993-1998) of the Committee on Safety of Medicines; and chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (1998 – 2008).
Professor Danny Altmann
Danny Altmann joined the Wellcome Trust in 2011 as Head of Pathogens Immunology and Population Health. He is also Professor of Immunology at Imperial College (Hammersmith Hospital) and Editor in Chief of the journal, Immunology. Prior to joining the Wellcome Trust he was Director of Research Strategy in Department of Medicine, Imperial College and a member of the MRC Infection and Immunity Board. His lab research interests have encompassed various aspects of basic HLA, T cell receptor and NK cell immunology, including a strong emphasis on development of transgenic diseases models. Current areas of focus are the immunology of bacterial sepsis and the immunopathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.
Ms Simone Bayes
Simone Bayes is Deputy Director, Policy Support Unit at Department of Health. Her previous posts have included, offender management and youth justice policy at Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, Service Manager at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust, Policy Lead, Cancer Team at Department of Health and strategic review at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.
The Hon Peter M Benson LVO, FCA
Peter Benson was educated at Eton College, and Edinburgh University where he obtained a degree in liberal arts. He qualified as a chartered accountant with Cooper Brothers & Co, subsequently Coopers & Lybrand, and latterly PwC, in 1965, becoming a partner in that firm in 1971. Based in the City of London, his early professional career concentrated on the provision of audit, investigative and financial advisory services, principally to major public and multinational companies. During this period, he spent time in Western Europe, Africa and North and South America. He played a significant role in the privatisation of British Telecom in 1984. Thereafter he specialised particularly in this area, working extensively in the Middle and Far East and Australasia. Peter is a highly experienced public speaker and has lectured all over the world on privatisation and other financial topics, frequently on Government and Ministerial Missions. He retired as a senior partner from PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2001, and is currently a non-executive director for a number of commercial and charitable concerns.
Ms Tara Camm
Tara Camm is a trustee of the Nuffield Trust, and currently General Counsel and Company Secretary for Plan International, a development organisation focused on children. She was involved in the early days of planning for UK Biobank, especially in helping to develop the Ethics & Governance Framework which guides its conduct. A lawyer with significant experience in the biomedical sciences, she will take on the role of Chair of UK Biobank’s Access Sub-Committee.
Dr Peter Craig
Peter Craig has worked as a researcher and research manager in central government for 20 years. He is Deputy Director of the Chief Scientist Office in the Scottish Government Health Directorates, where he is responsible for research in population health. From 2006-11 he also managed the MRC Population Health Sciences Research Network, a grouping of MRC-funded research units and centres that works to add value to the Council’s core investment by promoting methodological knowledge transfer and providing a common voice on policy issues in the population health sciences. Peter has a PhD in the Social Sciences, and an MSc in Epidemiology. His research interests are in the methodology of evaluating complex population health interventions. He is the lead author of the MRC Guidance on the development and evaluation of complex interventions, and the forthcoming MRC guidance on the use of natural experiments to evaluate population health interventions.
Dr Wendy Ewart
Wendy Ewart studied at the University of Southampton and at the University of Bristol where she received her PhD in Neuroscience. She was appointed to an academic position at Queen Mary, University of London (formerly the London Hospital Medical College) where she was a senior lecturer in Physiology and also Deputy Director of the Gastrointestinal Research Unit. Dr Ewart joined the staff of the Wellcome Trust in 1991 and was responsible for managing funding programmes including neuroscience and mental health and until 2003 headed the Trust’s funding programme in health and population science in the developing world. She also was a non-executive director of an acute NHS Trust for 7 years, completing her service over the final year as Chair. From 2003, Dr Ewart was Head of Research Strategy at the Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College where she was responsible for developing and implementing a new faculty research strategy. Dr Ewart was appointed to the Medical Research Council in August 2008, where she is a member of the MRC’s senior management team and is responsible for strategic planning, international strategy and also for the strategic evaluation programme.
Professor Sir Andy Haines
Andy Haynes is Professor of Public Health and Primary Care at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He has a joint appointment in the Dept of Social and Environmental Health Research and in the Dept of Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research. He was previously Director (originally Dean) of LSHTM for nearly 10 years up to October 2010, having previously been Professor of Primary Health Care at UCL between, 1987-2000. He worked part-time as a general practitioner in North London for many years. Professor Haines’ research interests are in epidemiology and health services research, focussing particularly on research in primary care and the study of environmental influences on health, including the potential effects of climate change and the health co-benefits of the low carbon economy. Between 1993-6 he was on secondment as Director of Research & Development at the NHS Executive, North Thames and was consultant epidemiologist at the MRC Epidemiology and Medical Care Unit between 1980-7. He has also worked internationally in Nepal, Jamaica, Canada and the USA. Professor Haines has been a member of a number of major international and national committees including the MRC Global Health Group (chair) and the MRC Strategy Group. He was formerly chair of the UUK Health and Social Care Policy Committee and of the WHO Advisory Committee on Health Research. He was a member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the second and third assessment reports and is currently review editor for the fifth report.
Professor Andrew Hattersley
Andrew Hattersley is Professor of Molecular Medicine at the recently formed Peninsula Medical School. He is a leading clinical scientist, who is distinguished for his contributions to the understanding of the genetics of diabetes and the application of that knowledge to clinical practice. He set up and currently heads the premier international research team working on monogenic diabetes and played a leading role in the genetics of type 2 diabetes. He continues to work as a consultant physician in diabetes while at the same time leading a large research team. Andrew Hattersley qualified from Oxford in 1984. He trained in Diabetes at the Hammersmith Hospital, Oxford and Birmingham before taking up his present post as a consultant diabetologist in Exeter in 1995. He was elected a fellow of The Royal Society in July 2010.
Professor Bill Ollier
Bill Ollier is Professor of Immunogenetics at Manchester University and Co-Director of the Centre for Integrated Genomic Medical Research. He also currently holds the position of Director of Research and Development with Salford Royal Foundation NHS Trust and NHS Salford. He graduated with a BSc in Zoology from the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1973 and was awarded a PhD from the University of London in 1980 for his research into renal transplant rejection. He moved to the University of Manchester in 1988 to set up genetic epidemiology laboratories within the internationally renowned Arthritis Research Campaign’s Epidemiology Research Unit. He was Chairman of the British Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics between 1994 to 1999. Professor Ollier’s research interests are focused largely on investigating the genetic basis of common complex disorders. These have centred primarily on rheumatic diseases, inflammatory and autoimmune conditions, neurocognitive disorders, and complex traits in companion animals. More recently he has developed an interest in pharmacogenetics and research into variability in efficacy and the development of adverse reactions to anti-inflammatory agents and new biological therapies. He has a long standing interest and expertise in the area of biobanking and sample management. He was a founder board member of the international biobanking initiative, Public Population Projects in Genomics ( P3G). The UK DNA Banking Network, a major national resource of samples and data, is held in his Department.