Professor Nigel Unwin
Nigel Unwin is Professor of Epidemiology at the Newcastle University, UK, where he leads the Advancing Research in Chronic Disease Epidemiology Programme, in the Institute of Health and Society.
He trained in general medicine in Oxford and the North East of England, and in public health in Manchester, before taking up a lecturer’s post with the Diabetes Group at Newcastle University in 1993. His research interests largely concern the epidemiology and public health importance of diabetes and related cardiovascular risk factors, both within the UK and in low and middle income countries, and across different ethnic groups. Between October 2003 and December 2005 he was a medical officer with the Diabetes Unit at the World Health Organization in Geneva, where he led a joint WHO-International Diabetes Federation (IDF) Programme of work. He returned to Newcastle to the Chair of Epidemiology in January 2006. Examples of currently active research interests include the determinants of the metabolic abnormalities associated with obesity, and the clinical and public health importance of the relationship between diabetes and tuberculosis. He is joint head of the Newcastle University WHO collaborating centre for diabetes; and he co-chairs the IDF Atlas Committee, which produces IDF’s flagship publication on the global epidemiology of diabetes.