Throughout his illustrious career, Professor Sir John Bell, former Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, has held many senior appointments across government, industry and healthcare. His influence across the sector has been instrumental in developing the UK’s landscape for health and medical research, and he has been a driving force behind Oxford’s success in the medical sciences for many years.
“The thing that resonates with me is getting to the top of the Times Higher Education league tables for medical sciences,” shares Sir John, reflecting on his time as Regius Professor. “At the time, we were the only UK university to get to the top of the tables across the world, and that flowed from 25 years of hard work to build up the medical sciences. It was a real achievement and when it happened for the first time it was pretty special.”
He puts the accolade down to the team of “very special people” across the University, as well as the foundations laid by his predecessors to bring together the right mix of expertise around critical areas of medical research – immunology, genetics of common diseases, epidemiological cohorts, and global health.
“When we started building programmes in global health at Oxford, what we were doing was way ahead of everyone else,” he says. “We were also the first to lean into immunology and inflammation as central to a range of human diseases – we made a bet in that space and it’s been hugely successful.”
But maintaining Oxford’s position in the global rankings is always going to be a challenge. Sir John believes an interdisciplinary outlook, with engineers embedded in the medical sciences and investment in big data analytics, is now a core strength of the University and key to its continuing development.
Read the full story on the Oxford Academic Health Partners website.