Rate My Professor Charlie Lees

Charlie Lees is Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Edinburgh and Consultant Gastroenterologist at the Edinburgh IBD Unit. He completed his MBBS at University College London in 2000 and moved to Edinburgh in 2001 for medical and gastroenterology training. He earned a PhD in IBD genetics from the University of Edinburgh in 2009 and has served as an NHS Consultant since 2009. Lees holds a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship since 2019 and is Adjunct Professor at Aalborg University’s PREDICT Center. His research focuses on predictive tools for inflammatory bowel disease outcomes, integrating biomarkers, electronic health records, multi-omics data, and machine learning to forecast flares, personalise therapies, and improve care through embedded decision support systems such as the SENTINEL project. He leads major studies including the PREdiCCt cohort and the Lothian IBD Registry, contributing to international consortia such as UKIBD BioResource and the Lancet Commission on Global IBD. Lees received the Bengt Ihre Prize from the Swedish Society of Gastroenterology in 2024. He has authored over 160 peer-reviewed publications, including recent works in Nature (2025), Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2025), and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2023), with an h-index of 67. His work emphasises translating research into clinical practice to reduce complications and enhance patient outcomes in gastroenterology.

Lees maintains an active clinical practice alongside his translational research team, drawing on Edinburgh’s unique data resources for real-world evidence on IBD epidemiology, therapy effectiveness, and global disease burden. He has delivered an inaugural lecture at the University of Edinburgh on the past, present, and future of IBD care and serves in leadership roles advancing precision medicine and health systems innovation.