Director's Page

The Director is responsible for the leadership within the Agency by providing: the framework for attainment of the Agency's mission in accordance with the IARC Statute, Rules and Regulations; the development of a Medium-Term Strategy and Implementation Plan that sets out the overall vision, direction and focus of the Agency's research programme (currently for 2010-2014); and oversight of the day-to-day operations of the Agency. The Director is advised by the Senior Leadership Team, a consultative body comprising the Director of Administration and Finance, the nine research Section Heads and the Head of Communications.

Christopher Wild obtained his PhD in 1984 from the University of Manchester, UK, and was awarded an IARC postdoctoral fellowship (held at IARC) and subsequently a UK Royal Society European Exchange Fellowship (at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, 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; he headed the Centre for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and became Director of the Leeds Institute of Genetics, Health and Therapeutics in December 2005. Dr Wild was elected Director of IARC from 1 January 2009.

The main research interest of Dr Wild is to understand the interplay between environmental and genetic risk factors in the causation of human cancer. He proposed the concept of the “exposome” to match the genome in order to better address this research topic. He has particularly sought to apply biomarkers in population-based studies to this end in relation to liver and oesophageal cancers. He supervises directly the Gambia Hepatitis Intervention Study.