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Professor Sir Rory Collins serves as Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank, a prospective study of 500,000 UK participants aged 40-69 at recruitment, a role he has held since September 2005. He is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at the University of Oxford and was previously Head of the Nuffield Department of Population Health. Collins studied medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School, University of London, earning his MB BS in 1981, and pursued studies in statistics at George Washington University and the University of Oxford, where he obtained an MSc in Applied Statistics in 1983 and an MA in 1986.
His research centers on epidemiology and large-scale clinical trials, with a focus on cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment. He coordinated the ISIS mega-trials demonstrating the efficacy of clot-dissolving and clot-preventing therapies in reducing heart attack mortality and contributed to evidence on statin benefits. Collins has served as British Heart Foundation Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and co-directed the Clinical Trial Service Unit and Epidemiological Studies Unit at Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (elected 2015) and the Academy of Medical Sciences (elected 2004), and was knighted in 2011 for services to science. In 2025, he received the Royal Society’s Buchanan Medal for his work on cardiovascular trials and leadership of UK Biobank. Collins is a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford.
Explore the UK Biobank data breach suspending access for university researchers, its causes, impacts on UK higher education, and steps toward secure biomedical research.
Explore the UK Biobank data breach where health data from 500,000 participants was listed for sale on a Chinese site. Implications for UK research, privacy risks, and future safeguards.
Explore the UK Biobank data exposures: how university researchers accidentally leaked health records on GitHub, implications for UK higher education, and steps to safeguard future research.
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