Prof. Patricia WOO (UK)

Professor Patricia Woo CBE FMedSci is Professor of Paediatric Rheumatology and Head of the Centre for Paediatric and Adolescent Rheumatology at University College London. Her medical education was at Charing Cross Hospital, University of London, and PhD at Cambridge University. She carried out postdoctoral studies at Childrens’ Hospital, Harvard, Boston,USA1983-5. On return from the USA in 1985, she workedas group head at the MRC Clinical Research Centre. She was appointed Professor at the University of London in 1994. She was elected Fellow of RCP, RCPCH and the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1991, 1997 and 2001 respectively.

She set up a tertiary referral service for children at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and the adolescent and young adult referral service at University College London Hospital in 1995. Her research teams undertake clinical and basic research on childhood arthritis, dermatomyositis, systemic lupus erythematosus, autoinflammatoy syndromes and vasculitis.. She co-founded the Paediatric Rheumatology International Trials Organisation in 1998, and remains as its councillor. She also founded the Paediatric Rheumatology European Society in 1999 and was its first president for the first 6 years. It now has >400 members and is the premier international professional society for paediatric rheumatology.

Her own research was mainly funded by MRC and ARC. She has published over 160 original publications, 68 reviews and book chapters, edited three editions of the Oxford Textbook of Rheumatology, and is senior author of the handbook: Paediatric Rheumatology in Clinical Practice.

She was was awarded the CBE by the Queen in 2005 for services to medicine.