Science
BHF Professor Sir Rory Collins awarded MRC Millennium Medal 2020
BHF Professor Sir Rory Collins at the University of Oxford has been awarded the Medical Research Council’s (MRC) most prestigious personal award, the Millennium Medal 2020.
Professor Collins is being honoured for his transformative national and international contributions to cardiovascular disease and his visionary leadership of the UK Biobank. These include his discoveries showing that statins safely reduce the incidence of heart attacks and strokes in a wide range of individuals, which has saved millions of lives worldwide.
As the latest recipient of the MRC Millennium Medal, he joins an elite group of men and women, including Sir Peter Mansfield, Professor Janet Darbyshire and Professor Sir Philip Cohen. All of whom have been recognised for their exceptional contributions to medical research.
BHF Professor, Sir Rory Collins said: “The ability of the world’s scientists to find ways to help control the Covid-19 pandemic so rapidly is a consequence of long-term investment in all types of medical research, from basic science at the level of the molecule to epidemiology on a population scale. As someone who has been supported by the British Heart Foundation throughout their research career, it is an extraordinary honour to be awarded the Medical Research Council Millennium Medal at such a time.”
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, our Medical Director, said: “Many congratulations to Sir Rory Collins on this highly deserved award. He has made seminal contributions into prevention and treatment of heart and circulatory disease that have saved many lives worldwide. As one of our distinguished BHF Professors, we are extremely proud that he has received this prestigious recognition.”
World leader in cardiovascular science
Over his 40-year career in Oxford, Professor Collins has driven the establishment of large-scale epidemiological studies on the causes, prevention and treatment of heart attacks, other vascular disease, and cancer.
He has led large studies that has changed the face of global medical practice, including discovering that statins were effective in reducing the incidence of heart attacks and strokes in a wide range of individuals, making statins a standard of care worldwide.
Leading the UK Biobank
Since September 2005, Professor Collins has been the Principal Investigator and Chief Executive of UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource that can be accessed globally by approved researchers, to enable scientific discoveries that improve human health.
The database, which includes blood samples, heart and brain scans and genetic data of 500,000 volunteer participants aged 40–69 at recruitment, is currently funded by MRC and Wellcome, the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK and the Department of Health and Social Care.
All the UK Biobank’s data and samples are available for use by any researcher for any type of health-related research in the public interest, providing a world-famous data-sharing model. By mid-2020, approximately 16,500 researchers from almost 90 different countries had registered to use the resource and around 1,500 peer-reviewed papers had been published based on the UK Biobank’s datasets.
Other prestigious awards
BHF Professor Sir Rory Collins has received other prestigious awards across his career, including receiving a knighthood in the 2011 New Year Queen’s Honours for services to science. He was also elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2004 and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2015.
In Spring 2021, Professor Collins will be invited to present a lecture at the MRC Millennium Medal 2020 awards ceremony to celebrate his achievements and recognise his excellent contributions in the medical research space.