Professor Chris Conlon Retires

Professor Chris Conlon has been a fellow and tutor in Clinical Medicine at Oriel since 2005, teaching medical undergraduates in lectures and seminars, as well as at the Infectious Diseases Unit at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where he is an honorary consultant physician.

During the COVID pandemic, Professor Conlon chaired the Health Medical Advisory Group, which advised the University of Oxford on its pandemic response, especially in regard to its testing service. Since 2014, he has also been the head of the Experimental Medicine Division at the Nuffield Department of Medicine. He is currently Chair of the Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health.

After an exemplary academic career, he is now retiring.

The Provost, Lord Mendoza, commended Professor Conlon’s contributions to Oriel College and clinical practice, stating: “We are immensely proud to have had such an eminent clinician and colleague at Oriel. Professor Conlon’s brilliance, warmth, and professionalism will be missed by Governing Body and our medical students.”

Professor Conlon began his academic career at New College, Oxford. He then went on to train at the University of London and the University of Birmingham, becoming a Member of the Royal College of Physicians (MRCP) in 1983 and a Fellow (FRCP) in 1996.

Professor Conlon also spent three years in Zimbabwe and Zambia. During this time he consolidated his grounding in tropical medicine.

Today, Professor Conlon’s main research interests are HIV, TB, travel medicine and COVID. Back in 2016, he told us that seeing his first patient with AIDS in 1983 was the stimulus for his clinical and research interests in infectious diseases.

There can be no doubt that Professor Conlon will be greatly missed by his students and colleagues, not only at Oriel, but also at the University at large.