Paul Franks trained at the University of Cambridge in biostatistics and genetic and molecular epidemiology, and has been a full professor at Lund University and Harvard School of Public Health since 2010. Paul also holds the Chair in Translational Precision Medicine at Queen Mary University of London, UK. Past roles include Director of the Department of Translational Medicine at the Novo Nordisk Foundation in Denmark (2021-2024), Deputy-director of Lund University Diabetes Center in Sweden (2016-2021) and Vice-President Elect of the Nordic Society of Human Genetics and Precision Medicine (2019-2021).

Paul’s research focuses on multimodal data and machine learning approaches to improve prediction, prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic diseases. He has published >500 peer-reviewed papers (cited >85,000 times) and given >300 invited lectures.

From 2018 to 2024, Paul co-chaired the ADA/EASD Precision Medicine in Diabetes Initiative, leading two international consensus reports (Chung et al, Diabetes Care, 2020; Tobias et al, Nature Medicine, 2023) and reporting guidelines on precision medicine research of clinical relevance (Lim et al, Nature Medicine, 2024). Since 2022, he has also co-chaired the NIDDK Heterogeneity of Diabetes Working Group (Franks et al, JCEM, 2025) and the NIH Global Heterogeneity in Diabetes Initiative (Cefalu et al. Nature Medicine, 2024). He chairs the upcoming Lancet Commission on ‘Global Implementation of Precision Medicine’ (launching 2026) and serves on the Executive Committee of Sweden’s PROMISE initiative (Kämpe et al, Nature Medicine, 2025).