Professor James Scott, BSc, MSc, MB BS, FRCP, CBiol FIBiol, FMedSci, FRS

Professor Scott is currently Professor of Medicine and Cardiovascular Medicine at Imperial College London.  He qualified in medicine at the Royal London Hospital in 1971.  He was previously Chief of Academic Medicine and of NHS clinical service, Chief of Cardiology and Head of Molecular Medicine at The Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital. He was founder and first Head of The institute of Genetics and Genomics and founder of the Bioinformatics Centre at Imperial College London. He previously worked at the University of California San Francisco Medical Centre. 

Professor Scott has received prizes from The Royal College of Physicians London, Glaxo Smith Kline, and Bristol Myers Squibb. He is Fellow of The Royal College of Physicians London. He was a founder member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, a Chartered Biologist and Fellow of the Institute of Biology. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society (The UK National Academy of Sciences). He is distinguished for the discovery of the totally novel mechanism of nucleic acid editing, a process concerned with cholesterol transport, antibody formation, protection against HIV and stem cell programming.

Professor Scott has discovered common genetic variation causing dyslipidaemia, heart disease and obesity. Current interests concern genetic and epigenetic mechanisms and systems biology studies in cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and preventive medicine. He has a particular interest in health and wellbeing in society, and longevity, through appetite control and motivation-based programmes, allied with biomarker and genetic prediction.  This leads to a unifying approach for prediction and prevention of metabolic (obesity, insulin resistance, type-2 diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease), and cardiovascular disease (atherosclerosis and heart failure).