Professor Zhengming Chen

Professor Zhengming Chen is a Senior Research Fellow of Green Templeton College and Richard Peto Chair in Epidemiology at Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford.

Professor Chen qualified in medicine at Shanghai Medical University in 1983, followed by further postgraduate training in public health. He came to the UK in late 1987 and completed his DPhil in Epidemiology at the University of Oxford in 1991. He was awarded Sir Richard Doll Research Fellowship at Green College (now Green Templeton College) in 1993, an ad hominem Readership in Epidemiology in 1998 and an ad hominem Professorship of Epidemiology in 2006 by the University of Oxford. In 2022, he was appointed as Richard Peto Professor of Epidemiology.

Professor Chen’s main research focus concerns causes, prevention and treatment of major chronic disease. Over the last few decades, he has initiated and led several large international randomised trials involving in total more than 100,000 patients, leading to major changes of international guidelines and clinical practice.

In 2003, he established and has led since its inception the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) of 512,000 adults, one of the largest of its kind in the world. The CKB will continue to generate important findings relevant to global health for at least the next 15-20 years. In Oxford he leads a large and expanding multi-disciplinary research team involving >50 people (plus many more in China), with research themes covering lifestyle factors, environmental health, chronic infection, novel biomarker discovery, genetic epidemiology, risk prediction, and application of big data in development of precision medicine and health.

Professor Chen also holds honorary professorships of several universities in China and sits on a number of international and UK research committees (e.g. Hong Kong Research Council, UK MRC, and the Wellcome Trust). In 2022 he was elected as Fellow of Academia Europaea in recognition of his scientific achievements.