London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Anne Mills joined the School as a lecturer in 1979, having previously worked at the Ministry of Health in Malawi as economist, and at the University of Leeds researching the operation of the NHS planning system in the UK. She completed her PhD on malaria in Nepal, and has since held numerous research grants and senior positions including most recently, Head of the Faculty of Public Health and Policy.

She was appointed Vice Director for Academic Affairs in 2011, deputy to the Director within the School's Senior Leadership Team, and continues to research, publish and teach as Professor of Health Economics and Policy in the Department of Global Health and Development.

Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: "This is wonderful news and very well deserved. Anne Mills is respected globally as an outstanding researcher and educator, and has made many original and impactful contributions in vital areas of health economics, financing and policy.

"She is also admired by all for her achievements here at the School, as a brilliant academic administrator, and as a genuinely modest, warm, good-humoured and generous colleague. Anne has been central to the School’s recent growth and development as a world-leading centre for global and public health."

Professor Mills has researched and published widely in health economics and health systems in low and middle income countries. She continues to be involved in research on health insurance developments in Tanzania, India and Thailand, and on strengthening services for mothers and children, as well as in supporting capacity development in health economics in low and middle income country universities and research institutes.

She has advised multilateral, bilateral and government agencies, served on the WHO's Commission on Macroeconomics and Health; and co-chaired one of the two Working Groups for the 2009 High Level Taskforce on Innovative International Finance for Health Systems, co-chaired by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

In 2006 she was awarded a CBE for services to medicine and elected Foreign Associate of the US Institute of Medicine. In 2009 she was elected Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and received the Prince Mahidol Award in the field of medicine. She is currently President of the International Health Economics Association (iHEA).

Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, said: "Science helps us to better understand ourselves and the natural world around us and has a huge role to play in future economic prosperity and the health of our planet and its 7 billion people. In the coming decades we are going to find ourselves more and more dependent on the solutions science can offer to grand challenges such as food shortages, climate change and tackling disease.

"These scientists who have been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society have already contributed much to the scientific endeavour following in the footsteps of pioneers such as Newton, Darwin and Einstein and it gives me great pleasure to welcome them into our ranks."

Related links

• Royal Society website
• Anne Mills profile and publications