Meet the team

Professor Amanda Cross, Head of the CSPRG

Professor Amanda Cross is a Professor of Cancer Epidemiology and Head of Section for Gastrointestinal Surgery within the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. In 2015 she became the Assistant Head of the Cancer Screening and Prevention Research Group (CSPRG) and in August 2018 became the Head of the CSPRG following the retirement of Professor Wendy Atkin. Professor Cross is also the Information Governance Lead for the CSPRG, and so has responsibilities for ensuring that information held by the CSPRG for the purposes of its research is used appropriately and that the necessary safeguards are in place. She completed her PhD at Cambridge University and then spent 11 years within the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. During her time as an investigator at NCI, she was also a mentor for the Yale University–NCI Partnership Training Program and held the position of Assistant Professor Adjunct within the Division of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. In the United States, she was one of the Principal Investigators of the Polyp Prevention Trial and the CONCeRN study, both colonoscopy screening studies, and she was also one of the Principal Investigators of the U.S. Polyp Pooling Project.

Professor Wendy Atkin, Founder of the CSPRG

Professor Wendy Atkin (1947-2018) moved to the St Mary’s Hospital Campus at Imperial College London in 2008 to establish the CSPRG. Wendy headed the CSPRG, overseeing many breakthrough bowel cancer screening trials and studies, until mid-2018.

Awards:

• Fellowship of The Academy of Medical Sciences, The Academy of Medical Sciences, 2015;
• Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) – awarded for services to Bowel Cancer Prevention, 2013;
• Bengt Ihre Medal, The Swedish Society of Medicine, 2012;
• BSG President’s Medal (2011), British Society of Gastroenterologists, 2011;

Selected Obituaries:

• Imperial College London –  Professor Wendy Atkin OBE 1947-2018
• The Lancet – Obituary: Wendy Shelia Atkin
• The Guardian – Wendy Atkin obituary: Epidemiologist whose research led to a breakthrough in bowel cancer screening programmes worldwide
• Daily Telegraph [paywall]- Wendy Atkin, epidemiologist who improved testing for bowel cancer 
• The Times [paywall] – Professor Wendy Atkin: Epidemiologist who loved listening to the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and established groundbreaking tests for bowel cancer
• British Medical Journal [paywall] – Wendy Atkin: epidemiologist who made an enormous contribution to bowel cancer prevention

Dr Gwen Murphy, Deputy Head of the CSPRG

Dr Gwen Murphy is the Deputy Head of the CSPRG and Co-Chair of the Data Strategy and Governance Committee in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London. Gwen joined the CSPRG in 2022 and was appointed Deputy Head in 2024. Gwen earned a PhD in Clinical Medicine from Trinity College Dublin, and a Masters in Public Health from University College Dublin before joining the Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). During her 13 years at the National Cancer Institute, Gwen worked to initiate the NCI International EBV-Gastric Cancer Consortium, was a founding member of the African Esophageal Cancer Consortium (AfrECC), coordinated a number of large international field studies of upper gastrointestinal cancers (China, Iran, Kenya, Brazil) and was a Steering Committee member for the Polyp Prevention Trial. Her research programme is focused on understanding the molecular epidemiology of gastrointestinal cancer to enhance cancer screening.

Awards:

• Sarah Purser Medical Research Scholarship
• NCI Cancer Prevention Research Training Merit Award
• NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence
• DCEG Intramural Research Award
• Outstanding Research Paper by a DCEG Fellow
• NIH Earl Stadtman candidate
• NIH Royalty Funds Recipient
• NCI Staff Scientist & Staff Clinician Outstanding Mentor Award

PhD Students