Robert Winston

Robert Winston is Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College, London University, and Director of NHS Research and Development for Hammersmith Hospital, one of the UK's leading medical research centres. He is also Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University.

He was the recent Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology and is a board member of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. He is a regular BBC presenter, his series include Your Life in Their Hands, Making Babies, The Human Body, Secret Life of Twins, The Superhuman, Child of our Time, "Threads of Life" and Human Instinct.

His Queen Charlotte's Appeal recently raised over £13 million to build and equip the most advanced reproductive research centre in Europe, with space for 130 scientists and doctors working to improve the health of women and babies.

His contributions to clinical medicine include the development of gynaecological microsurgery and his team has established various improvements in reproductive medicine, subsequently adopted internationally, particularly in the field of endocrinology, IVF and reproductive genetics. His group's research enabled families with a history of a particular genetic disease to have children free of fatal illnesses. Their achievements include the development of techniques to help families who have problems associated with gender (such as haemophilia and muscular dystrophy), single gene defects (such as cystic fibrosis) and chromosomal abnormalities. The team is now, amongst other things, developing methods for maturing eggs outside the body, a technique that will make IVF very much cheaper and more accessible and far less an intrusive procedure for would-be parents.

He has approximately 300 scientific publications in learned journals (including Nature, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet) and various books, and writes regularly for the lay press.