Giles Yeo is from San Francisco, receiving his bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1994, he came to Cambridge (Wolfson College) joining the lab of Professor Sydney Brenner (Nobel Laureate 2002) for his PhD studies. In 1998 he began his postdoctoral training with Professor Sir Stephen O’Rahilly in the Department of Clinical Biochemistry, working on the genetics of severe human obesity, where he was the first to report that mutations in the melanocortin-4 receptor (MC4R) and in the neurotrophic receptor TRKB resulted in severe human obesity.
Giles is now a Professor of Molecular Metabolism and MRC Investigator at the MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, Wellcome-MRC Institute of Metabolic Science. He is also a postgraduate Tutor and Fellow of Wolfson College. He is currently Honorary President of the British Dietetic Association.