Merton alumnus Professor Tim Cole awarded CBE for services to medical statistics

Merton alumnus, Professor Tim Cole (1968), has been appointed a Commander of the order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Kings birthday honours list. 

Professor Cole receives his CBE in recognition of his services to medical statistics. Now professor emeritus, he was professor of medical statistics at the UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health from 1999 to 2024, employed in various roles by the Medical Research Council from 1970 to 2019, from 1999 to 2019 he was an external scientific staff member with the MRC, and latterly professorial research fellow with UCL. His research has covered aspects of child growth assessment, including growth chart construction (the LMS method), growth curve analysis (the SITAR method), factors relating early growth to later outcome, the IOTF child obesity cut-offs, and body size scaling and forensic age assessment. 

In 2006/07 he was appointed Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and also Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. In 2016 he was awarded the Rank Prize for Nutrition, and also the Royal Statistical Society's Bradford Hill Medal. In 2019 he was given the Tanner Memorial Medal of the Society for the Study of Human Biology.

Professor Cole has also made a significant contribution to peer review as a statistical and subject reviewer, acting as referee for over 50 journals and a statistical reviewer (latterly statistics editor) for the British Medical Journal from 1991 to 2024. 

Professor Cole says of his appointment: 

"I feel very honoured to receive this public recognition of my work over 50+ years into the statistics of the growth of children. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work alongside my many talented colleagues to improve the nation’s child health.”