Nicola Blackwood

Member of the House of Lords and Chair of Genomics England

Nicola Blackwood was Conservative Member of Parliament for Oxford West and Abingdon from 2010 to 2017, the first woman to represent an Oxford seat, and chaired the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee from 2015 to 2016, again the first woman to do so. She served as parliamentary under-secretary of state for public health and innovation from 2016 to 2017 and, after being created a life peer as Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford in February 2019, as health minister for innovation and life sciences until February 2020, with responsibility for life sciences, NHS data and digital transformation and global health security. She has chaired Genomics England since May 2020 and also chairs Oxford University Innovation and the government's new Health Data Research Service, having previously chaired the Human Tissue Authority. She sits on the boards of the vaccine company BioNTech, the investment fund RTW Biotech Opportunities and the Alan Turing Institute. She read music at Oxford and holds an MPhil in musicology from Cambridge, and speaks publicly about living with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.