Dr Hugh Montgomery is Professor of Intensive Care Medicine at University College London (UCL), where he also directs the Centre for Human Health and Performance. He also works in the field of Artificial Intelligence as applied to Health, working one day a week for DeepMind Health, part of Alphabet/Google.
Montgomery is also a geneticist. He discovered the first 'gene for human fitness' - one which also changes the chance of surviving critical illness by five-fold. His research looks into why one person may live and one may die when they look almost identical and suffer the same disease. Montgomery is interested in whether survivors are born, or made.
Montgomery still spends 25% of his time working in a North London Intensive Care Unit. In terms of research, he has published over 480 scientific research articles and is perhaps best known for his discovery of ‘the first gene for human fitness’.
Montgomery chaired the last two Lancet Commissions on Human Health and Climate Change, and has written and lectured extensively on the subject. He was appointed to the post of Leader by London’s Sustainable Development Commission, attended many of the international ‘COP’ negotiations, and led the children’s climate education Project Genie.
He organised the Royal College of Physicians first meeting on Climate and Health, was a founder member of the UK Climate and Health Alliance, and helped create the International Alliance on the same subject. He organised the first International Meeting on Climate, Health and Security in 2009.
Montgomery has patented a treatment for cancer wasting and prevention of injury in stroke; a new technology for patient hydration; a novel mask for the removal of pollutants; and a new asthma inhaler.
