The new Labour Government has appointed Sir Patrick Vallance FRS FMedSci FRCP HonFREng as Minister of State (Minister for Science). He was previously Government Chief Scientific Adviser (GCSA) from April 2018 to April 2023.
Vallance was also National Technology Adviser (NTA) and Head of the Government Science and Engineering (GSE) Profession. Previously he was President, R&D at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) from 2012 until 2017, having joined the company in 2006. Prior to joining GSK, he was a clinical academic, Professor of Medicine and led the Division of Medicine at UCL. He has many years’ experience of basic science and clinical research, and was a consultant physician in the NHS. His research spanned work on medicinal chemistry and structural biology, through to cellular work, studies in humans and use of large electronic health record databases.
He was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999 and to the Royal Society in 2017. He was on the Board of the UK Office for Strategic Co-ordination of Health Research (OSCHR) from 2009 to 2016. He is an Honorary Fellow at UCL and holds honorary degrees from Imperial College London, Glasgow University, University of York, and St George’s, University of London. He was a non-executive director and board member for UK Biobank and a non-executive board member for Genome Research but stepped down in taking up the GCSA role.