James Chalmers

Professor James D Chalmers studied medicine in Glasgow before medical training in South East Scotland. in 2008 he was awarded a Medical Research Council Training Fellowship to undertake a PhD into the immunology of bronchiectasis at the MRC Centre for Inflammation Research in Edinburgh. He moved to the University of Dundee in 2011 and established his independent research group in 2012. He was awarded a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship in Molecular Microbiology in 2013 and subsequently was awarded the GSK/British Lung Foundation Chair in Respiratory Research and a Senior Clinical Fellowship from the Scottish Government Chief Scientists Office in 2017.

From 2012-2025 his group at Dundee led fundamental discoveries in the investigation and treatment of chronic lung diseases including leading the development programme for DPP1 inhibitors, now the first licensed therapy for bronchiectasis. He has published more than 550 peer reviewed manuscripts and chaired several international guideline panels including the 2017 European Bronchiectasis Guidelines, the 2020 European Guidelines for ICS use in COPD, the European Respiratory Society Living Guideline for Management of Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 and the 2025 European Respiratory Society Guidelines for the Management of Bronchiectasis in Adults.

He was appointed as Deputy Chief Editor of the European Respiratory Journal and was appointed Chief Editor in 2018. He is current Chair of the Standards of Care Committee of the British Thoracic Society and co-Chairs the Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office Translational Clinical Studies Committee. 

In 2025 Professor Chalmers took up the Rhodes Chair of Experimental Therapeutics and Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Oxford.