Portrait of Patrick Vallance

Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation of the United Kingdom

Patrick Vallance

  • 2019

Sir Patrick Vallance FRS FMedSci FRCP is Government Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Science and Engineering profession. Patrick was President, R&D at GlaxoSmithKline from 2012 until 2017. Prior to this, he was Senior Vice President, Medicines Discovery and Development. He joined the company in May 2006 as Head of Drug Discovery. He was a member of the GSK Board and the Corporate Executive Team. During his period as head of R&D over 14 new medicines were approved for use worldwide, for diseases ranging from cancer to asthma and HIV. Prior to joining GSK, he was a clinical academic, Professor of Medicine and led the Division of Medicine at UCL. He has over 20 years’ experience of basic and clinical research, and was a consultant physician in the NHS. His research spanned from work on medicinal chemistry and structural biology, through to cellular work, studies in humans and use of large electronic health record databases.