The Founders of the CRC Network

David contributes to Oxford as a Professor of Cancer Medicine, and has an international reputation for the treatment of, and research into colorectal cancer and the quality of his work has been recognised by the award of several international prizes. One of them was the first NHS Nye-Bevan award for innovation. He has published over 400 papers with an H-Index of 107 associated with over 54500 citations. David has made a significant contribution to reforming the NHS as a Founding Commissioner for Health Improvement, Chair of the National Cancer Services Collaborative, Instigator of the Department of Health’s networked approach to clinical cancer research and developed a 20-year plan for the future of the NHS in Scotland, the “Kerr Report”. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2000, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 2007, and appointed Commander of the British Empire in 2002 by HM the Queen. He was elected President of the European Society of Medical Oncology in 2010. He has established INDOX and Afrox to improve the quality of cancer care in India and Sub-Saharan Africa. He has served as Health Adviser to two British Prime ministers, Tony Blair and David Cameron.

Marco is a consultant histopathologist at University College London. He is an international expert on gastrointestinal histopathology with special interests in colorectal cancer, Barrett’s oesophagus and gastrointestinal mesenchymal tumours. He has published over 90 peer reviewed publications with approximately 4000 citations. His main research interests are on the biology and genetics of colorectal cancer.

Ian is Professor of Cancer Genetics at the University of Oxford. His main research interest is colorectal cancer cancer genetics, but he also works on endometrial cancer and broader aspects of cancer evolution. From 2019 to 2022 Ian was Chair at Charles and Ethel Barr Cancer Research at the University of Edinburgh and Director of Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. Before moving to Edinburgh he was Professor of Molecular and Population Genetics and Head of the Population and Functional Genetics Lab at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford, and Director of the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences at the University of Birmingham. 

Håvard took on the role of leading the CRC network. He served as the Director at the Institute for Cancer Genetics and Informatics (ICGI) at Oslo University Hospital in Norway and was a professor in the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo. Unfortunately, he passed away in November 2023.

In 2017, he was appointed Visiting Professor in Cancer Informatics at the Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences at the University of Oxford, where he enjoyed collaborations with esteemed colleagues. His previous positions include being a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Centre for Cancer Biomedicine, a Norwegian Research Council center of excellence in research, as well as PI for the DoMore! project. His research focused primarily on DNA- and chromatin organization, using informatics as a tool to study genomic changes in cancer.

In 2022 he was awarded the King Olav V´s Cancer Research Award from the Norwegian Cancer Society, as well as the Excellent Researcher prize from Oslo University Hospital.