Christopher Paul Wild obtained his PhD in 1984 from the University of Manchester, UK whilst working on the production of monoclonal antibodies to detect low levels of methylated DNA bases.
He was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to work in Lyon, France and subsequently a UK Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship to spend a year at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. In 1987 he rejoined IARC as a staff scientist and later became Chief of the Unit of Environmental Carcinogenesis. In 1996 he was appointed to the Chair of Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Leeds, was Head of the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and later became Director of the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health and Therapeutics in December 2005. He was elected Director of IARC in May 2008 and he took office on 1st January 2009. He has an Honorary Chair in Molecular Epidemiology at the University of Leeds.
Dr Wild's main research interest is to understand the interplay between environmental and genetic risk factors in the causation of human disease. He has particularly sought to apply biomarkers in population-based studies in order to address this research area. He has focused on the causes and prevention of liver and oesophageal cancers and has a particular interest in the impact of mycotoxins on human health.
