Harpal Kumar

Sir Harpal Singh Kumar (born 1965) is a British medical researcher of Indian descent who is president of GRAIL Europe. He was chief executive officer of Cancer Research UK from April 2008 until June 2018, and then senior vice president and head of innovation EMEA at Johnson & Johnson until April 2020.

Early life Kumar's parents were refugees. As Sikhs, they chose to leave what was to become Pakistan and move to India during the Partition of India in 1947, where they ended up in refugee camps. Later they moved to England from India, where his father was employed sweeping factory floors, before eventually starting his own grocery store.

Kumar attended Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith before taking up a place to study chemical engineering at the University of Cambridge. He graduated with Master of Engineering and Master of Arts degrees and was awarded the Mobil Prize, Metal Box Prize, and Hughes Prize during his time at Cambridge. He subsequently gained a Master of Business Administration degree with high distinction as a Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School where he won the Ford Prize and the Wolfe Prize. In 1997 he founded Nexan Group, a venture capital-backed medical devices company. He became chief executive officer in April 2007

From 2018 to 2020, Kumar was head of EMEA at Johnson & Johnson Innovation. In April 2020, he was appointed president of GRAIL Europe by GRAIL Inc.

Kumar's non-executive roles have included serving as a trustee of the Francis Crick Institute and the Institute of Cancer Research,

Awards and honours Kumar was knighted in the 2016 New Year Honours for services to cancer research.

Personal life Kumar is a British Indian, a British Punjabi and a British Sikh.

Kumar lists his recreations as theatre, opera and football.