Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh announces move to Oxford

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh OBE appointed as next Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences at the University of Oxford

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh has been appointed to succeed Professor Richard Hobbs CBE as Nuffield Professor of Primary Care Health Sciences and Head of Department, Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, the University of Oxford. The appointment is effective from 1 August 2024.

Aziz will remain in close collaboration with the Usher Institute at The University of Edinburgh working on the EAVE surveillance platform, which has developed one of the most comprehensive national-scale health data resources in the world.

Developed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, EAVE brings together linked GP, vaccination, testing, viral sequencing, hospitalisation, prescribing, and mortality data into a near real-time national longitudinal cohort, which covers 99% of the Scottish population. This surveillance platform has allowed the EAVE II team to provide crucial answers to urgent health policy, public health and clinical questions throughout the pandemic.

During his time at The University of Edinburgh Aziz has served as an adviser to a number of Scottish, UK and international government bodies and to inter-governmental organisations, including the World Bank and World Health Organization.

It has been an incredible pleasure to have worked with many wonderful colleagues across the University of Edinburgh over the past two decades to integrate primary care, public health, social sciences and health informatics to create the Usher Institute, which is now widely regarded as one of the foremost applied health research groupings in the world. I am so very proud of the vitally important contributions Usher colleagues are making to advance population health across Scotland, the UK and beyond, which I look forward to continuing to support in the years ahead.

Aziz moved to The University of Edinburgh in 2003, and succeeded Professor Andrew Morris as Director of the Usher Institute in 2017. He has overseen a period of rapid growth in the Institute, and an incredibly busy period through the Covid-19 pandemic. He is also Dean of Data for The University of Edinburgh, Director of the Asthma UK Centre for Applied Research and a Research Director of Health Data Research UK.

A leading primary care academic and epidemiologist, Aziz has 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. Aziz enjoys collaborations with academic colleagues across the globe and works closely with policymakers both in the UK and internationally. He has, together with colleagues, held research grants of more than £100m and publishes regularly in the world's foremost journals.

Professor Sir Aziz Sheikh has made an immeasurable contribution to The University of Edinburgh and to people all over the world through his public health research. I am delighted that Aziz will be able to continue his research collaboration with colleagues here and that this work will strengthen our connection with the University of Oxford.