Member, BMS IAC
Regius Professor of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, UK

Dr John Bell has been appointed as the Regius Chair of Medicine at the University of Oxford in April 2002.  Dr Bell was educated at the University of Alberta, Canada, and at Magdalen College, Oxford, before he became a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in 1992. His academic posts include a Clinical Fellowship at Stanford University, where he stayed from 1982 until his return to Oxford in 1987. Before becoming Nuffield Professor and Head of Clinical Medicine in 1992, Dr Bell was Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow (1987-89) and University Lecturer (1989-1992). He became a member of the Council of the University in 2001.

Dr Bell's scientific work focuses on the immune response and the genetics of autoimmune disease. He has contributed work that defined several of the genes involved in diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis susceptibility. He was also involved in work that led to the first use of tetramers (with Andrew McMichael and Mark Davis) and the work characterising the T cell surface molecule CD8.

Dr Bell is the founder of the Oxford University's Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (founded 1993) and had a key role in the development of the South Headington site, which comprises eight newly-founded biomedical institutes, either built or currently under construction. The Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine grew substantially under his leadership and now brings in half the income of the Division of Medical Sciences. As a board member of Isis Innovation (Oxford University's technology transfer company), Dr Bell has been active in the commercialisation of scientific findings. He is the founder or founding director of a number of spin-off companies, such as Powderject (1993), Oxagen (1997) and Avidex (1999).

As a member of numerous international and national medical and scientific boards, Dr Bell's interest has not only been in the advancement of medical science but also in the development and career of young scientists, as his latest Chairmanship of the National Institutes of Health-Oxford Graduate Student Programme testifies. This collaborative programme gives some of the most outstanding US and UK students the opportunity to work alongside leading scientists in Oxford and at NIH research centres in the USA.