Professor Mark Thursz has accepted the appointment of Director of the Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), with effect from 1 August 2024, for a term of five years. He succeeds Professor Jonathan Weber who had held this position since 2012. We express our thanks to Professor Weber for his long stint in office and for his unwavering commitment to the AHSC and its NHS partners and to Imperial College London.
Professor Thursz has been the Head of the Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction (MDR) since 2019, a role he will step down from in due course once a new postholder is identified and takes up the post.
Professor Thursz joined Imperial in 1991 as a clinical research fellow and was appointed to a Senior Lectureship in 1997. He was promoted to Professor of Hepatology in 2006. He has held many senior roles within the Department and Faculty, including Head of the Division of Digestive Diseases within MDR, and St Mary’s Campus Director.
He is R&D Director at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, where he is a consultant hepatologist based at St Mary’s Hospital. He is also Director of the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, which in 2022 was awarded a five-year grant of over £95M from the NIHR to support research activity in collaboration with Imperial College London.
Professor Thursz is a former secretary of the British Association for Study of the Liver (BASL) and led the European Association for Study of the Liver, as Secretary-General (2011-13). Professor Thursz’s research interests are focussed on viral hepatitis and alcohol-related liver disease. He established the Prevention of Liver Fibrosis and Cancer in Africa (PROLIFCA) programme to address barriers that prevent the control and elimination of viral hepatitis in countries with limited resources. He also runs a translational research programme in alcohol-related liver disease funded by the MRC and NIHR.