Professor Helen Colhoun holds the AXA Research Fund endowed Chair in Medical Informatics and Life Course Epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh within the Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine (IGMM) where she leads the Diabetes Medical Informatics and Epidemiology programme.

Helen joined the University of Edinburgh in 2016 having previously held tenured professorial posts in epidemiology at the University of Dundee, University College London and University College Dublin. She also holds an honorary Consultant post in Public Health in the National Health Service. Professor Colhoun’s epidemiological and clinical trials research have impacted on and been cited in clinical guidelines internationally and in national policy for diabetes.

Professor Colhoun’s current research programme uses large scale population based approaches to further understanding of the pathogenesis and means of prevention of diabetes complications.   In particular it uses electronic health data to model the risk of diabetes complications and avails of linkage to biobanks to generate and examine the utility of other high dimensional data including molecular and ‘omics data for prediction.