Robert Clarke

Robert Clarke is a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine at the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU), Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford and Consultant in Public Health Medicine and Director of the MSc course in Global Health Science. He qualified in clinical medicine in Ireland and worked for 5 years in internal medicine and 4 years in cardiology. After 2 years in clinical pharmacology at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA, he joined CTSU in 1991 and specialised in Cardiovascular Epidemiology.

His main research interests are to understand the importance of classical and novel risk factors for occlusive vascular diseases. He led several large observational studies and meta-analyses of observational studies and randomized trials (eg, Whitehall study, PROCARDIS, CARDIoGRAMplusC4D, B-Vitamin Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration and the BEST-D trial). He also worked extensively on the Prospective Studies Collaboration and the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB) study. He currently leads a research programme to assess the importance of blood pressure, blood lipids, and novel biomarkers (including genetic markers, cytokines, proteomics and metabolomics) for occlusive vascular diseases in the CKB study. His work has been widely cited (200 publications, H-index of 54) and is listed in Tomson Reuters’ Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014.