Mark Walport


Sir Mark Jeremy Walport is an English medical scientist and was the Government Chief Scientific Adviser in the United Kingdom from 2013 to 2017 and Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation from 2017 to 2020.

Education

Walport is the son of a general practitioner and was born in London. He was educated at St Paul's School, London, studied medicine at Clare College, Cambridge, and completed his clinical training at Hammersmith, Guy's and Brompton Hospitals in London. He was awarded a PhD for research into complement receptors under the supervision of Peter Lachmann in 1986 at the University of Cambridge.

Career and research

Previously Walport was Director of the Wellcome Trust from 2003 to 2013. Before this, he was Professor of Medicine and Head of the Division of Medicine at Imperial College London, where he led a research team that focused on the immunology and genetics of rheumatic diseases.
Walport was the eleventh Government Chief Scientific Adviser from 2013 to 2017, succeeding Sir John Beddington.
It was announced in February 2017 that Mark Walport is now Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation.

Honours and awards

Walport was knighted in the 2009 New Year Honours list for services to medical research. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2011. His nomination for the Royal Society reads: