Prof Elizabeth Simpson

Elizabeth Simpson qualified in veterinary medicine in Cambridge.

She set up and ran a mixed practice in New Brunswick, Canada for two years before taking postgraduate pathology training in Cambridge, UK. Becoming interested in the parallels between inflammatory responses to tumours and transplants in animals and humans, she moved into biomedical research at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research, London, and contributed to the rapidly growing field of cellular immunology, later, after holding research fellowships in the USA, adding the tools of genetics and molecular biology to probe in vivo and in vitro function.

Recruited back to the UK to head a research team in Transplantation Biology at the MRC’s Clinical Research Centre, Harrow, she included the talents of medical, veterinary and basic science graduates to characterise the molecular identity of target antigens eliciting immune responses to transplants, tumours and autoantigens, and the immune response genes controlling those in vivo manifestations.

Peer review work included membership/chairmanship of MRC, BBSCR, WT, CRUK and ERC research funding committees, and of Scientific Advisory Boards to UK, French, German, Italian and South Korean research institutes.

She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999, Fellow of the Royal Society in 2010 and awarded an OBE in 2000, honorary Fellowship of the RCVS in 2010 and an honorary DSc from Imperial in 2015.