Leadership and Governance
Professor Aziz Sheikh OBE leads the Usher Institute.
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh OBE, Director
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh is Director of the Usher Institute.
Aziz is a primary care academic and epidemiologist with substantial research interests in asthma/allergy and in leveraging the potential of health information technology and data science to transform the delivery of care and improve population health.
He enjoys collaborations with academic colleagues across the globe and works closely with policymakers both in the UK and internationally.
He has held research grants in excess of $90m, publishes regularly in the world's foremost journals, has over 50,000 citations to his work and is a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate, 2018).
Currently Aziz holds a number of visiting chairs, namely: University of Birmingham (UK), Queen Mary’s University of London (UK) and Maastricht University (Netherlands). He was previously Visiting Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
He is an editorial board member of BMC Medicine, Health Informatics Journal, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Medical Care and PLOS Medicine, and is Editor-in-Chief of npj: Primary Care Respiratory Medicine.
Aziz was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for Services to Medicine and Health Care by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2014, and received a knighthood in 2022 for services to COVID-19 research and policy.
Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh's profile
Professor Jackie Price, Deputy Director
Jackie Price is Professor of Molecular Epidemiology, an honorary consultant in public health medicine, NHS Lothian and Deputy Director of the Usher Institute. She is co-ordinating editor of the Cochrane Vascular Review Group, Edinburgh lead for the UK-based UCLEB Collaboration on applied genomics and Postgraduate Research Director for the Usher Institute.
Professor Price has long standing experience in many aspects of evidence-based medicine and molecular epidemiology with a particular long term interest in the vascular and non-vascular complications of type 2 diabetes. She has explored the effect of aspirin on age-related cognitive decline in people with asymptomatic atherosclerosis, in the first major clinical trial of its kind, and has developed population-based studies and biobanks in several human populations, including the Edinburgh Type 2 Diabetes Study with core funding from MRC. Recent projects have explored circulating, genetic and retinal image-based biomarkers for age-related cognitive decline, renal dysfunction, dementia, liver disease and macrovascular disease in people with type 2 diabetes, including their potential use in risk prediction. She is also a member of numerous national and international collaborations, notably on global burden of disease, asymptomatic vascular disease and -omics.
Professor Jackie Price's profile
Senior Leadership Team
The Usher Institute Director and Deputy Director are supported by the wider Usher Institute Board as the key strategic decision making committee of the Institute and the Usher Institute Executive as the key operational decision making committee of the Institute - responsible collectively for management, policy and procedures of the Institute.
The Usher Institute Board includes the Heads of Centres; Directors of: Research, Knowledge Exchange and Research Impact, Innovation, Education and Postgraduate Research; Senior Research Strategy Manager; SRO Data-Driven Innovation Hub; Director of Professional Services and Communications and Engagement Manager.
Usher Institute Board - committees site
Usher Institute Executive - committees site
External Advisory Board
Our External Advisory Board is chaired by Professor John Ioannidis (C F Rehnborg Chair Disease Prevention. Stanford), with members Dr David Blumenthal (President of the Commonwealth Fund), Professor Martin McKee (Professor of European Public Health LSTM), Professor Debbie Lawlor (Professor of Epidemiology, University of Bristol) and Professor Lawrence Gostin (Professor of Global Health Law, Georgetown).