Ioanna Tzoulaki

Ioanna Tzoulaki is a professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London. She investigates prognostic risk factors and models for chronic diseases and meta-epidemiology. In 2019 she received a Greek L'ORÉAL-UNESCO Award for Women in Science.

Early life and education Her father was a mathematician. At the University of Edinburgh she studied inflammation and haemostasis in peripheral atherosclerotic disease. She made use of the Edinburgh Artery Study, a cohort study of over 1,500 men and women. She showed that people with elevated iron levels are at higher risk of suffering from a cardioembolic stroke, a condition which is caused by blood clots which move from the heart to the brain and block the supply of blood and oxygen. To investigate this connection, Tzoulaki used a method known as Mendelian randomization. In an attempt to predict people's risk of heart disease, Tzoulaki developed sophisticated testing protocols that analysed genetic variants. These tests looked for single-nucleotide polymorphisms, small changes in DNA that occur when one nucleotide is replaced with another. She found that these protocols only showed a modest benefit over conventional testing (i.e. calculating QRISK; which evaluates levels of cholesterol, smoking habits and history of diabetes). In September 2020 Tzoulaki was made Professor of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London.