Dr Giles S.H. Yeo

Giles Yeo is from San Francisco and came to Cambridge in 1994 to do his PhD with Prof Sydney Brenner (Nobel Laureate 2002). In 1998 he joined Prof Sir Stephen O’Rahilly as a post-doc in the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, studying the genetics of human obesity.  In 2007, Giles became Director of Genomics &Transcriptomics and a group leader at the University of Cambridge Metabolic Research Labs. Giles is also a graduate tutor and fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is also President of the British Society for Neuroendocrinology. His group is interested in studying the brain control of food intake and bodyweight, and how these might be dysregulated in obesity.

Giles is co-leader of Module 2 of the Master’s in Genomic Medicine course. While Giles usually teaches undergraduates, his experience of being a tutor at Wolfson College, which is a mature student college, has been invaluable in influencing his approach with engaging the diverse mature student cohort of the Genomics Medicine programme.

Outside of academia, Giles is also passionate about science communication and public engagement. He speaks regularly at science festivals across the country, including at Cheltenham, Hay and Cambridge festivals. Giles is also an occasional presenter for BBC Horizon.  His film ‘Why are we getting so fat?’ screened in June 2016 on BBC2 and garnered more than 2 million viewers. His next film, which tackles the fad diet phenomenon of ‘Clean-eating’ is due out in the first quarter of 2017.