Hugh Watkins is Radcliffe Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, and Honorary Consultant in Cardiology at the John Radcliffe Hospital. He has been the Director of the British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence at Oxford since its inception in 2008. Professor Watkins researches the molecular genetic basis of cardiovascular disease in order to define disease mechanisms and to improve diagnosis and treatment of patients and families with inherited diseases. He works on both rare inherited diseases, in particular cardiomyopathy, where genetic advances now underpin diagnosis and new approaches to therapy, and common diseases such as Coronary Artery Disease. In 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and an NIHR Senior Investigator. From 2022 he will lead an international programme which aims to create genetic cures for cardiomyopathies, CureHeart, winner of the BHF's Big Beat Challenge.