Professor Tim Aitman

Chair of Molecular Pathology and Genetics

Biography

Background

Professor Tim Aitman is the Director of the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine within the MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine. He is a Professor of Molecular Pathology and Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, the Clinical Director of the HighSeqX facility in Edinburgh Genomicsand Consultant Physician in NHS Lothian. Professor Aitman is the co-Director and Edinburgh PI of the Scottish Genomes Partnership, a nationally important collaboration with the NHS, and is also the Director of the Edinburgh-St Andrews Consortium for Molecular Pathology, Informatics and Genome Sciences, one of only six new MRC-EPSRC Molecular Pathology Nodes in the UK.

A graduate of the Birmingham Medical School and Kings College London he obtained his DPhil at Wolfson College in Oxford University. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in April 2014, he was Group Head and Section Chair at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith Hospital in London, Honorary Consultant Physician at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and Professor of Clinical & Molecular Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London (where he continues as Visiting Professor). Prof Aitman is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Academy of Medical Sciences and Society of Biology. He is also a Trustee of the Public Health Genomics (PHG) Foundation, a member of several external advisory boards (including the Sir Jules Thorn Medical Advisory Committee and the Wellcome Trust Expert Review Group on Genetics), and editorial board member of Mammalian Genome, Physiological Genomics, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Medical Genomics and Human Molecular Genetics. He was the Specialist Adviser for the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Genomic Medicine, and is currently a member of the Genomics Advisory Board of Health Education England.

Professor Aitman has authored over a hundred scientific papers, many highly cited, and has been invited to give over 150 plenary and state-of-the-art lectures at major national and international conferences. He co-ordinated multiple scientific projects and research consortia with career grant support of over £30 million. In 2007, with the support of Nature Genetics and the Wellcome Trust, he co-founded the Genomics of Common Disease meetings, now a prominent international meeting series in its ninth year. Prof Aitman has also been a mentor of many successful graduate students and postdoctoral scientists.

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