I was fortunate to spend a very formative, foundational decade of my early career, back in the 1990s, as a trainee psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital and as a PhD research fellow in the Institute of Psychiatry. I am truly honoured and delighted to be returning to King’s and the IoPPN, as the next Regius Professor of Psychiatry. I look forward to rejoining the largest and most diverse organisation of mental health and brain scientists in the UK; and to working and learning with colleagues, old and new, to maximise our collective impact on the future of mental illness.
Professor Ed Bullmore
20 January 2025
Professor Ed Bullmore appointed Regius Professor of Psychiatry at King's College London
The new Regius will join King’s in June 2025.
King’s College London is delighted to announce that Professor Ed Bullmore will be joining the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) as Regius Professor of Psychiatry in June 2025.
The Regius Professorship, originally awarded to King’s in 2013, was the first to be associated with psychiatry or mental health, and a recognition of the exceptional quality of teaching and research at IoPPN.
The prestigious title is bestowed by King’s to an esteemed professor of psychiatry, who demonstrates outstanding research and clinical practice within the field and is a pioneering researcher, clinician and educator.
Ed Bullmore has been Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge since 1999 and his key research themes are network neuroscience and novel therapeutics. He has a strong track record of developing and educating students, early career researchers and neuroscience leaders, and has extensive experience in mental health services and industry.
Professor Bullmore’s research was initially motivated by using brain imaging to understand more about the origins of severe mental illness. He pioneered an innovative approach to the analysis of human brain networks from structural and functional MRI scans, which highlighted the importance of highly-connected cortical hubs for normal adolescent brain network development, and for neurodevelopmental and mental health disorders, especially schizophrenia. More recently, he has also investigated the role of the immune system and inflammation as potentially causal factors for depression that could be the focus of new therapeutic approaches to treatment or prevention of mental illness.
The Regius Professor of Psychiatry is a role for an eminent scholar and leader. Ed Bullmore is an outstanding and original thinker in mental health and psychiatry, and we’re delighted to welcome him back to IoPPN as the Regius Professor of Psychiatry.
Professor Matthew Hotopf, IoPPN Executive Dean
Professor Bullmore trained in medicine at the University of Oxford and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and in psychiatry at the Maudsley and Bethlem Royal Hospitals. He completed his PhD in brain MRI statistical analysis at the Institute of Psychiatry in 1997 before moving to Cambridge as Professor of Psychiatry in 1999. He was Head of the Department of Psychiatry from 2014-2021, and is currently Deputy Head of the School of Clinical Medicine in the University of Cambridge as well as a Non-Executive Director of Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Foundation NHS Trust.
From 2005-2019, Professor Bullmore worked half-time for GlaxoSmithKline, as Vice-President for Experimental Medicine, focusing on immuno-psychiatry, as described in his best-selling book “The Inflamed Mind” (2018). His scientific work on brain networks and development of mental health disorders has been highly cited. He has been elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, as a Fellow and Treasurer of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and as an Honorary Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.
The creation of Regius Professorships falls under the Royal Prerogative, with each appointment approved by the Monarch on ministerial advice. In 2013, marking Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee year, King’s College London was awarded the first and still the only Regius Professorship in the field of Psychiatry.
The title was first bestowed on Professor Sir Simon Wessely FRS, who has held it for over ten years.