Dr Dennis Gillings, CBE, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Quintiles Transnational Corp.

Monday 18 October, Peter Chalk, Newman A

Dr Gillings was born and educated in the United Kingdom, receiving both a Bachelor's Degree and PhD in Mathematics from the University of Exeter. He began providing statistical consulting and data management services to pharmaceutical clients in 1974 during his tenure as Professor of Biostatistics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Dr Gillings founded Quintiles in 1982, which grew out of his consulting activities with the pharma industry. He took Quintiles public on NASDAQ in 1994 and led its privatization in 2003. Today, Quintiles is the largest global provider of clinical trials and commercial marketing services to the pharma and biotechnology industry.

With nearly 30 years of experience in drug development applications and theory, Dr Gillings has provided expert consultation to numerous companies and health organizations, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute for Dental Research and the Institute of Medicine.  He has served on several Advisory Boards and Councils including the Cambridge Judge Business School Advisory Board, the Scottish Enterprise Advisory Board and the International Advisory Council in Singapore. He also was the founding Chairman of the Association of Clinical Research Organizations, a Washington-based trade group formed in 2002. He served for more than 15 years as a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science in May 2001. He was honored by the Queen as Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2004 for services to the Pharmaceutical Industry. He was appointed Pro-Chancellor of Southampton University in 2006. In June 2008, Dr Gillings was made Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary, University of London and was awarded an Honorary DSc at the University of Southampton. In September, 2008, the School of Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill was named the Gillings School of Global Public Health. The mission is to advance the impact of economic and methodological research on health in both the developed and developing world.

Dr Gillings will be speaking on "Shaping the Future: How the pharmaceutical industry will rise to the global health challenges of the 21st century"

Please see our flyer for further details.