Fiona Powrie
Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, University of Oxford
UK
Fiona Powrie is Director of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, a basic and translational inflammatory sciences centre at the University of Oxford. She gained a PhD in immunology from the University of Oxford and then moved to the DNAX Research Institute in Paulo Alto. She returned to the University of Oxford in 1996 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and she was the Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology and Head of the Translational Gastroenterology Unit from 2009-2014. Fiona’s research has identified the functional role of regulatory T cells in intestinal homeostasis and established the cytokine IL-23 as a therapeutic target in chronic intestinal inflammation. Her current interests include characterisation of the interaction between the intestinal microbiome and the host immune system and how this mutualistic relationship breaks down in inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis and cancer. Fiona received the Ita Askonas Award from the European Federation of Immunological Societies for her contribution to immunology in Europe and the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2012. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011, EMBO in 2013 and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2014. She joined the Wellcome Trust’s Board of Governors in 2018.