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Collins, Rory
Foreign Fellows
Elected: 2023
Email: mailto:rory.collins [@] ndph.ox.ac.uk
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Prof. ord. di Medicina ed Epidemiologia all’Università di Oxford.
Rory Collins is an epidemiologist who studies how to prevent and treat cardiovascular disease in large population-based studies. He has been at Oxford since 1981, where he heads the Nuffield Department of Population Health.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, he coordinated the ISIS “mega-trials” of the emergency treatment of heart attacks involving more than 130,00 patients. These trials showed that clot-dissolving and clot-preventing treatments could more than halve mortality, rapidly becoming part of routine care worldwide.
Since the early 1990s, he has been evaluating the effects of modifying blood cholesterol levels. For example, the 20,000 patient Heart Protection Study that he led showed that lowering LDL-cholesterol with statin therapy safely reduces the risk of cardiovascular death and disability among a wide range of people. As a consequence, statins are used extensively worldwide.
He became Principal Investigator of UK Biobank in 2005. Involving 500,000 participants, it is the largest deeply-characterized prospective study globally, available for any type of health research. Over 30,000 researchers worldwide use it currently, generating over 2000 papers in 2022 alone.
He was knighted for services to Science in 2011, elected to the Royal Society in 2015, and awarded the UK Medical Research Council’s 2020 Millennium Medal.