Professor Helen Coleman is Lead of the Cancer Epidemiology Research Group at the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast. The Cancer Epidemiology Research Group includes ten academics and approximately 20 postgraduate research students and postdoctoral research fellows as of early 2024. She has been Deputy Director of the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, also hosted within the Centre for Public Health, since 2020.

Professor Coleman’s research mostly focuses on the epidemiology and early detection of gastrointestinal cancers and premalignant conditions. She has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, in addition to several book chapters, blogs and Northern Ireland Cancer Registry audit reports. Helen has supervised 16 postgraduate research students to completion, and is currently supervising six PhD students (four as primary supervisor), one MD and one MPhil student.

Professor Coleman co-leads the All-Ireland Cancer Network (AllCaN) in Oesophageal cancer, funded by Breakthrough Cancer Research. She currently holds a prestigious Cancer Research UK Career Establishment Award, which began in 2018 and aims to investigate the ‘Epidemiology and molecular pathology epidemiology of Barrett’s oesophagus and oesophageal adenocarcinoma in the modern treatment era’.  Prior to this, Helen held a Cancer Research UK Population Research Postdoctoral Fellowship from 2013-2016, which investigated the role of tumour vitamin D receptor expression and vitamin D related genetic variation in colorectal cancer survival. This was held in tandem with her first Lecturer appointment at Queen’s University Belfast in 2013, where she was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2016, and then Professor of Cancer Epidemiology in 2019.