Professor Tim Aitman

Chair of Molecular Pathology and Genetics

Biography

Background

Professor Tim Aitman is Professor of Molecular Pathology and Genetics and Director of the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine within the University of Edinburgh’s Institute of Genetics and Cancer. He is also Honorary Consultant Physician in NHS Lothian. Professor Aitman is Principal Investigator of the Scottish Genomes Partnership, a nationally important collaboration with the NHS and with Genomics England. Most recently, he founded the One Health Genomics Edinburgh network, now a vibrant community of over 600 researchers across the University.

A graduate of the Birmingham Medical School and Kings College London he obtained his DPhil at Wolfson College in Oxford University. Before joining the University of Edinburgh in April 2014, he was Group Head and Section Chair at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith Hospital in London, Honorary Consultant Physician at Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust and Professor of Clinical & Molecular Genetics in the Faculty of Medicine of Imperial College London. Professor Aitman is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh, and of the Academy of Medical Sciences and Society of Biology. He is also a Senior Fellow of the PHG Foundation and has served on several external advisory boards, including currently a European Research Council Advanced Grant panel. He was Specialist Adviser for the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee's Inquiry into Genomic Medicine and is currently the Regional Champion for Scotland for the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Aitman has authored over a hundred scientific papers, many highly cited, and has been invited to give over 150 plenary and state-of-the-art lectures at major national and international conferences. He has co-ordinated multiple scientific projects and research consortia with career grant support of over £30 million. In 2007, with the support of Nature Genetics and the Wellcome Trust, he co-founded the Genomics of Common Disease meetings, a prominent international meeting series alternating for several years between the UK and USA. In April 2021, he co-founded the company BioCaptiva, that spun out from the University of Edinburgh in April 2021, with an investment of >£3 Million jointly from the Archangels investment syndicate, Scottish Enterprise and Cancer Research UK, to develop a unique, patented method for capturing cell-free DNA.

Professor Aitman’s research uses genome technology and information to develop innovative approaches to diagnosis and management of rare and common diseases, including liquid biopsy analyses in cancer, and to translate these advances into routine healthcare for patient benefit.

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