Professor Irene Tracey CBE, FRS, FMedSci., is Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford and Professor of Anaesthetic Neuroscience in the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, a department she led for several years whilst holding a Nuffield Chair. Irene did her undergraduate and graduate studies at Oxford University, Merton College. She was a founding member of the world-leading Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, formerly FMRIB, and was its Director for ten years. Irene has served on many national and international committees, such as the Council of the Medical Research Council and Lundbeck Brain Prize Committee. Until recently she was President of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies. 

Her multidisciplinary research team has contributed to a better understanding of pain perception, pain relief and nociceptive processing within the human central nervous system during acute and chronic pain using advanced neuroimaging techniques and novel paradigm designs. They also investigate the neural basis of anaesthesia and have developed a biomarker for depth of anaesthesia that they hope to commercialise. She has trained over 35 PhD students. She has been awarded many honours, such as: triennial Patrick Wall Medal (2008) and FRCA (2009) from Royal College of Anaesthetists; Fellow Academy of Medical Sciences (2015); Feldberg Foundation Prize (2017); British Neuroscience Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience (2018); Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to Medical Research (2022); Honorary Fellow Physiological Society (2022); Honorary Membership British Pain Society (2023); Fellow of the Royal Society (2023); Honorary Fellow Royal Society of Medicine (2024).