Mark Walport

Professor Sir Mark Walport joined the Board of NHS England in January 2023. He is Honorary Distinguished Professor of Medicine at Imperial College and chairs Imperial College Health Partners and Imperial College Academic Health Sciences Centre. He is a trustee of Health Data Research UK.

He trained as a clinician scientist in Cambridge and London, and spent most of the first 25 years of his career as a practising rheumatologist and general physician. He became Professor and Head of the Division of Medicine at Imperial College in 1997.

In 2003 he was appointed Director of the Wellcome Trust, in 2013 Government Chief Scientific Adviser and in 2017 founding CEO of UK Research and Innovation. As the government chief scientific adviser, he advised on science, technology and engineering for many aspects of government policy. He chaired the scientific advice group in emergencies (SAGE) during the Ebola and Zika epidemics. He was appointed a member of the Prime Minister’s Council of Science and Technology (CST) in 2004, and co-chaired CST during his time as government chief scientific adviser. He was a founding Fellow and the first Registrar of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and is a Fellow and council member of the Royal Society and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.