We are pleased to announce that for our next Insigneo seminar Professor Cathie Sudlow BMBCh MSc DPhil FRCPE FRSE FMedSci OBE, Director, BHF Data Science Centre, Health Data Research UK will give a talk on 'What is the BHF Data Science Centre doing to support UK population-wide health data science'.

About Professor Cathie Sudlow

Professor Cathie Sudlow is the inaugural Director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre, which aims to improve the public’s cardiovascular health through the power of large-scale data and advanced analytics across the UK and beyond. She is also Chair of Neurology and Clinical Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. Cathie was previously Director of the Centre for Medical Informatics at the Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh and was the first Research Director for HDR UK in Scotland. From 2011-2019, she was Chief Scientist of UK Biobank, a large-scale research resource, with in-depth genetic and health information from half a million UK adults, accessible to approved researchers worldwide, studying a wide range of common, rare and life-threatening health conditions.

Cathie is a clinical neurologist and epidemiologist. Her clinical work involved assessing and treating patients with suspected acute stroke in the hospital emergency department.

Her research interests are firmly embedded in the world of big data, in particular large-scale, collaborative, open-science initiatives to understand the causes (genetic, environment and lifestyle), consequences of, and best treatments for common diseases of middle and older age. These have included initiatives to establish the role of antithrombotic drugs in preventing heart disease and stroke, to investigate differences between stroke subtypes, and to discover genes that influence stroke. From 2011, she led efforts follow the health of UK Biobank participants through linkage to national health datasets, and during 2020-2021 worked with NHS Digital to develop the first trusted research environment to hold and enable access for research to linked health data for the whole population of England.

She was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018 and awarded an OBE for services to medical research in the Queen’s Birthday Honours in 2020.  In 2022, Cathie was elected as a Fellow to the Academy of Medical Sciences and has most recently been appointed as Deputy Chair to the Data Science Strategic Advisory Group (DSAG), Medical Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation).