“An entirely unplanned journey, but great fun so far” – an interview with Prof David Owen, new Campus Director for Hammersmith Hospital

Professor David Owen was appointed Faculty of Medicine Campus Director for Imperial College London’s Hammersmith Hospital Campus in October 2025. The university campus is co-located at the site of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s Hammersmith Hospital in west London. We spoke with Prof Owen about his vision, background, and plans for the hospital.

Hammersmith Hospital Campus is now Imperial College London’s largest health sciences research hub, with historic strengths in cardiology and nephrology that have shaped treatments for heart and kidney disease.

The National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Imperial Clinical Research Facility supports experimental medicine, translating science into patient care. The site is also a leading centre for brain imaging, advancing technology for neurodegenerative disease research (including Alzheimer’s) and fetal/neonatal brain development.

Its Clinical Imaging Facility was relaunched in November 2024 with cutting-edge equipment, including a whole-body PET-CT scanner (a combined imaging system that shows both body structure and how organs are working) and a 3T MRI scanner (a high-resolution magnetic imaging system for detailed pictures of the brain and soft tissues). 

In the conversation below, Professor David Owen, a clinical pharmacologist based at Imperial College London and Campus Director at Hammersmith Hospital, shares the background, vision, and plans for the Campus. 

Congratulations on your new role. We’d love to learn more about your background. You have expertise in clinical pharmacology, innate immunity, and neurodegeneration – could you tell us about your professional journey? 

Professor David Owen: In a word, my professional journey has been “unplanned”. My PhD was meant to focus on using MRI to identify carotid atherosclerotic plaques, which were at high risk of bursting and hence identifying those patients who needed more aggressive treatment. I chose it because I thought it sounded really interesting, and of course, clinically, it’s an important question. But another reason it appealed to me was that, at that stage in my career, I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up, so I thought it would be a good training which would teach me skills that could be applied to many other therapeutic areas. 

As with many PhDs, the end result was quite different from the initial plan. The contrast agent we were using for the MRI was suddenly withdrawn from the market, so I found myself more than halfway into my PhD with a bit of a problem, to say the least. But I was rescued by what started as a small laboratory pharmacology project that I had been doing on the side, which (thankfully) grew into a story that was sufficient for a PhD. And I learnt how to use a pipette too. 

What sparked your interest in moving from imaging and vascular research to neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s disease – conditions where brain cells gradually die? 

Experience in pharmacology whetted my appetite for the field, and that’s why I chose clinical pharmacology as a speciality. The move towards neurodegeneration was science-led – there was rodent data to suggest that the target I was studying with PET (a protein called TSPO) might also have potential as a drug target in Alzheimer’s, by modulating microglial function. So, I swerved towards using TSPO as a drug target rather than a PET target. And that took me towards the blood vessels both in the brain and in the periphery. So, an entirely unplanned journey, but great fun so far. 

As Campus Director, what is your vision for developing the campus in line with the Faculty’s priorities?  

There is exceptional research within the Faculty of Medicine across Imperial’s campuses, but at the Hammersmith campus, we have the combination of both a very large research footprint and a research-intensive hospital. In that respect, we are quite unique. There are not many centres across Europe, or indeed the US, that have this combination of clinical and research excellence (and research facilities to match) at such a scale. So, I think we are uniquely placed to be a world-leading site for clinical research.  

Clinical research is vital to turn our exceptional basic science into real-world advances for patients. As technologies like advanced imaging, multiomic platforms and wearables evolve, we will be able to measure more disease-relevant phenomena in people, allowing us to use humans as the experimental model in early-phase studies. Big data and AI will play a growing role in hypothesis generation, but these hypotheses will still need to be tested in well-designed experimental medicine studies. All of this dovetails with the Faculty’s Strategy, which is, amongst other things, 1) to ensure we are a world leader in impact-driven biomedical research and 2) to secure our position as the national centre of excellence for clinical academia. 

What are your key priorities in this role? 

The short and medium-term priority is to make day-to-day life on campus much more comfortable. I think the refurbishment of the Ex Libris restuarant and the area which links it to the Wolfson Education Centre is a really great start, but we can do more to improve the available spaces for people to meet and work together. The food options and changing rooms/showers also need thought; at the moment, our options are limited compared to what is available at other campuses. I also think we can improve the way we interact between the departments. Ideally, I would like to see a regular event where presentations are given by researchers in one department with the primary aim of initiating collaborations with another department; major discoveries often result from cross-disciplinary collaborations. 

And what about your long-term priorities for the campus? 

The long-term priority is to ensure that we take advantage of the opportunities presented by the reconstruction at Old Oak Common. The new station will connect HS2 and the Elizabeth line and (hopefully) First Great Western and will be busier than Paddington, Waterloo and King’s Cross. Many millions of people will be able to access our site with a journey time of less than an hour. We have to take full advantage of this by making sure there are easy and safe routes to get from the station to the campus, so we can attract staff and patients for clinical trials from as wide a pool as possible. I am also extremely keen for us to have a “front entrance”, so that you know you have arrived at an impressive university. But this is not an easy ask! 

What do you enjoy doing when you’re not driving neurodegeneration research or overseeing campus development? 

There was once a time when I used to have things called “hobbies”. I used to play football, do a lot of cooking (I am quite food orientated), go out with friends, etc. But I have 3 young children, so when I’m not at work, my main aim is to just survive the day and make sure they get dressed, go to school, do their homework, get to bed on time, etc. Our aspirations are modest – if we get to watch an episode of something on TV without my wife or me falling asleep, that is considered a win. When I was a kid, my sisters and I used to laugh at a fact book we had, which said that when people were asked what they would do if they had an extra hour in the day, 24% of people said they would use that extra hour to watch more TV. My wife and I have become that 24%. 

Thank you for this conversation. We wish you all good luck in this extremely busy role and in delivering your goals and plans! 

Thank you.