People

John Bell, G.B.E., F.R.S., FMedSci (Chair of Committee) John Bell is the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford University. Bell went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar to train in medicine and undertook postgraduate training in London and at Stanford University. At Stanford, he developed research interests in the area of immunology and genetics, with a particular focus on characterizing the molecular events associated with susceptibility to autoimmune diseases. He returned to Oxford as a Wellcome Trust senior clinical fellow in 1987 and was elected to the Nuffield Professorship of Clinical Medicine in Oxford in 1992. In 1993, he founded the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, one of the world’s leading centers for complex trait common disease genetics. In 2002, he became the Regius Professor of Medicine. Bell served as president of the Academy of Medical Sciences from 2006 to 2011. He was responsible for the working party that produced the academy’s highly influential “Strengthening Clinical Research” report that highlighted the need for the U.K. to focus some of its attention on developing expertise in translational research. In 2006, he was appointed by the chancellor of the exchequer to chair the Office for the Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR), and in December 2011, he was appointed one of two U.K. Life Sciences Champions by the prime minister. In collaboration with industry, academia, charity, and research organizations, Bell drafted the U.K. Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, which provides recommendations to the government on the long-term success of the life sciences sector. The report was published on August 30, 2017. In 2008, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society and a Knight Bachelor for his services to medical science. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE) in the 2015 New Year Honours for services to medicine, medical research, and the life science industry. Bell has been involved extensively in the development of research programs in genetics and genomics and in the development of a clinical research program across the U.K. He sits on a range of advisory panels for public and private sector bodies responsible for biomedical research in Canada, Denmark, France, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.K, and he is a founding director of three biotechnology start-up companies.