Rate My Professor Sheila Singh

Professor Sheila Singh is Professor of Neuro-oncology and Neurosurgery at King’s College London, where she serves as Joint Head of the School of Cancer & Pharmaceutical Sciences and Head of the Comprehensive Cancer Centre. She also holds a senior strategic advisory role with Evelina London Children’s Hospital, part of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. A neurosurgeon-scientist qualified with MD, PhD, and FRCS(C), her PhD thesis focused on the identification of cancer stem cells in brain tumors. She runs a large basic and translational brain cancer research program within the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine.

Her research applies a developmental neurobiology framework to the study of brain tumorigenesis, emphasizing molecular mechanisms governing brain tumor initiating cell (BTIC) self-renewal. She investigates regulation of BTIC signaling pathways in glioblastoma, brain metastases, and childhood medulloblastoma, aiming to selectively target BTIC with immunotherapies and molecular therapies. Previously at McMaster University, she served as Professor of Surgery and Biochemistry (part time), Professor and Head of Neurosurgery, and Paediatric Neurosurgeon at McMaster Children’s Hospital. She founded the Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research (CDCR), the McMaster Surgeon Scientist Program, and held a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Brain Cancer Stem Cell Biology. She was also scientific founder and interim CEO of Empirica Therapeutics, acquired by Century Therapeutics Inc. in June 2020. Professor Singh has authored over 200 manuscripts in journals including Nature, Nature Medicine, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell, Cancer Research, and PNAS, accumulating 28,792 citations and an h-index of 94. A landmark publication is “Identification of human brain tumor initiating cells” (Nature, 2004). Her accolades include the 2024 Canadian Cancer Society Robert L. Noble Prize, Fellowship in the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and the Royal Society of Canada, and council membership in the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).