Congratulations Gill Reeves

Senior Research Fellow Gill Reeves has taken up the role of Valerie Beral Professorship of Epidemiology at the Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford. She was previously Professor of Statistical Epidemiology and Director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the department.

Professor Gill Reeves trained originally as a statistician and completed a PhD in statistics at Imperial College before joining the Cancer Epidemiology Unit in Oxford as a medical statistician.

In the early 1990s, she was involved in setting up the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer, a large international collaboration of over 100 epidemiological studies, which has generated key findings on the role of oral contraceptives and HRT in breast cancer incidence, and influenced clinical practice.

She is a PI for the Million Women Study, a very large UK cohort study of women’s health, which provides the basis for much of her epidemiological research. Her main research interests are the prevention and early detection of breast and other cancers.

This new professorship is named for late Emeritus Fellow Professor Dame Valerie Beral (1946–2022). Dame Valerie was a Governing Body Fellow of Green College then Green Templeton College until September 2019. In 1989 she had succeeded Sir Richard Doll as the Director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit and was a world-leading breast cancer epidemiologist.

Commenting on her appointment, Gill said,

‘Valerie Beral was a uniquely talented scientist, and a friend and mentor to me for much of my career. I am, therefore, delighted and honoured to have been appointed to this new Professorship which was named in recognition of her enormous contribution to the field of epidemiology.’

Green Templeton congratulates Gill Reeves on her appointment.