Nish Chaturvedi

Doctor of Science

Tuesday 8 July 2025 - Orator: Professor Chrissie Thirlwell

Listen to the full oration and honorary speech on SoundCloud.

 

Vice-Chancellor, 

The challenge of generating evidence that really improves public health is substantial. Flagging associations between possible risk factors and pathology is one thing, but collecting data, running studies and coordinating researchers is a tricky business. There is then also the thorny issue of trying to understand complex relationships between exposure, biology and risk that ultimately lead to useful findings. With key factors including social disadvantage and ethnicity in the mix, the complications are many – however, if you ask the right questions and pool the correct resources, the work you undertake can make an enormous difference… 

As a clinical epidemiologist, Professor Nish Chaturvedi has led pioneering work investigating how structural inequalities shape patterns of disease and health outcomes across the life course. Her research has consistently pushed the boundaries of public health and population science, with a particular focus on cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. Nish’s commitment to equity in health research has made her a leading voice in the effort to uncover and address the root causes of persistent disparities in health outcomes. 

At the time of Nish’s arrival, her parents were living in Exeter where her dad was working as an ophthalmologist. Although she grew up in the UK Nish’s mother her mother travelled home to Calcutta give birth before returning a few months later with babe in arms. Nish and her sister went to an all-girls school and went on to read Medicine in London. She obtained a medical doctorate from St Thomas's London and trained in public health as a member of the celebrated “New Bloomsbury group” of engaged public health physicians. 

Nish has had a particular focus on diabetes and cardiovascular disease, a major concern of epidemiology in the last decades of the 20th century. It is the breadth of Nish’s work that sets her apart – her studies have covered self-diagnosis of cardiovascular disease across ethnicities; how material deprivation influences treatment pathways; the consequences of inadequately treated disease; a myriad of molecular biological contributions to the conditions, through to trials of both prevention and treatment. She has frequently challenged commonly accepted, but poorly supported ideas and been an excellent collaborator and mentor to many.    

As Chair in Epidemiology in the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at University College London and whilst being an MRC Unit lead (the Unit for Lifelong Health and Ageing at University College London - which incorporated The National Survey of Health and Development – NSHD, or "1946 Birth Cohort”), Nish has been a driving force in the promotion of longitudinal population studies as a tool for the examination of health and disease. Important contributions in this field have included establishing the Southall and Brent Revisited Study (SABRE) – an important tri-ethnic study which has charted and dissected the patterns of risk and health across those of South Asian and Afro-Caribbean – as well as European – ancestry.

Closer to home, Nish has contributed to many grants that have supported the collection of important data on the Children of the 90s study, to the enduring gratitude of the directors. She has played pivotal roles in numerous national and international initiatives, not least being Chair of Clinical Epidemiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute International Centre for Circulatory Health (Imperial), Clinical Epidemiology at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences (University College London – also as an MRC Unit Lead) and a Trustee of the British Heart Foundation.  

Contributions to science at a policy level were most obviously revealed through her untiring efforts during the COVID_19 pandemic; as Director of the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing National Core Study. As a leader for crucial work coordinating multiple life course studies around pandemic problems, Nish was able to mobilize the potential of population-based epidemiology. This was an enterprise that required calm, strong and measured leadership at a difficult time and was a role that capped a brilliant career so far and that has been since recognised through her OBE – awarded in 2023 for services to medical research.

Nish and the team that she has led have changed the way a whole research community operates – providing a clear future view of how epidemiology can contribute to policy and public health. Kind, patient, strong and inspiring, she helped in a moment critical to public health research and did it in a way that will shape things to come - materially and culturally. I know that her work has improved the health and wellbeing of millions of people globally – thank you! 

It is a privilege to be here today to witness this honorary degree and to recount this extraordinary and continuing career. 

Vice-Chancellor, I present to you Professor Nishi Chaturvedi as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Science honoris causa.