Adrian S. Woolf is Professor of Paediatric Science in the Division of Cell Matrix Biology & Regenerative Medicine, in the Faculty of Biology, Medicine & Health in the University of Manchester, UK.

He is also an Honorary Consultant Nephrologist at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, and an Honorary Professor at University College London.

Qualifications: 1981 MB BS, University of London (Honours in Medicine); 1982 MA, University of Cambridge; 1984 MRCP II UK: 1989 MD Thesis, University of London.

 As a Travelling Research Fellow at UCLA (1989-1991), he became interested in how kidneys form and grow. He returned to the UK as a Kidney Research UK Senior Fellow (1991-1996) to establish his research group in the Developmental Biology Unit, Institute of Child Health, London (now UCL). There, in 1998, he created the academic Nephro-Urology Unit and was promoted to UCL Professor of Nephrology in 2000.

 In 2010 he was appointed as Chair of Paediatric Science in the University of Manchester where he is also a member of the Senate of the University of Manchester.

 He has three decades experience as a clinician scientist and uses human genomics, and preclinical and stem cell models to: i. pinpoint genetic and environmental causes of renal tract congenital malformations; ii. define the roles of implicated molecules in organogenesis and differentiation; and iii. design therapies to prevent malformations and promote regeneration.

 He co-authored the UK Renal Research Strategy (2016), the first  research blueprint for the speciality. He has supervised science and clinical students leading to 16 PhD awarded theses.

 In 2010 he established a multidisciplinary Renal Genetics clinic in the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital. Making a specific genetic diagnosis can provide a family with an answer to their often long-sought question “why was our child born with devastating disease”. With his genetics and adult nephrology colleagues, Drs Helen Stuart and Kate Hillman, he takes part in a similar clinic in St. Mary’s Hospital for adults with kidney problems. They has assessed over 400 referrals in the last ten years.