Martin Landray

Martin Landray is Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health and was the founding Deputy Director of the University of Oxford's Big Data Institute.

Professor Landray’s work seeks to further understanding of the determinants of common diseases chiefly through the design, conduct and analysis of efficient, large-scale clinical trials. He has led a series of major clinical trials, chiefly of treatments for cardiovascular and kidney disease.

The results of these trials have influenced regulatory drug approvals, clinical guidelines, and prescribing practice to the benefit of patients. Since March 2020, he has co-led the RECOVERY trial, the world’s largest trial of potential treatments for COVID-19, publishing definitive results for multiple treatments, including the discovery that dexamethasone reduces mortality for the sickest patients.

He leads Protas, a not-for-profit organisation focused on smarter randomised trials for better public health. He leads the Good Clinical Trials Collaborative in the development, promotion and adoption of guidelines for randomised controlled trials, supported by Wellcome and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2021, he was appointed to the Pandemic Preparedness Partnership leading to the publication of the G7 100 Days Mission to Respond to Future Pandemic Threats which recommended significant regulatory improvements to facilitate the rapid generation of relevant and robust results from innovative randomised controlled trials.

Professor Landray completed medical training at the University of Birmingham (UK) and specialist training in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics and General Internal Medicine at the University of Birmingham.

He continues to practise clinical medicine as an Honorary Consultant Physician in the Department of Cardiology at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. In 2021 he was elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and was knighted for services to public health and science.

IN the News

The Lancet: Harnessing the power of good clinical trials

New York Times: Where Is America’s Groundbreaking Covid-19 Research?

BBC News: The London bus trip that saved maybe a million lives

The Economist: How British science came to the rescue

The Economist: Testing, Testing

European Heart Journal: Clinical trials: how to get closer to the right answer with less effort

Lectures, webcasts and interviews

RECOVERY - reflections and future directions
British Pharmacological Society, September 2021

Big Trials, Big Data, Big Potential: population health research in the 21st century
Inaugural Lecture, University of Oxford, November 2015

Big Data for Efficient Clinical Trials
National Academy of Medicine, Washington DC, October 2015

Quality by Design for Clinical Trials
Clinical Trial Transformation Initiative, Bethesda, April 2015