Dr Gary Clifford was born in Brighton, UK, and has been working in the field of cancer epidemiology for over twenty years. He obtained his PhD in Biological Sciences in the UK at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. After his postdoctoral work at the University of Surrey, Dr Clifford was awarded a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO), Lyon, France, where he then became senior cancer epidemiologist, and is currently Deputy Head in the Early Detection, Prevention and Infections Branch.

Whilst at IARC, Dr Clifford has been involved in a broad range of international epidemiological studies on infectious agents and cancer, including clinical evaluations of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine programme impact in low- and middle-income country implementation settings, describing the influence of HIV on cancer epidemiology in the combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) era, assessing anal cancer risk stratification and its implications for prevention, and understanding the global burden of cancer attributable to different infectious agents.

Dr Clifford is the author or co-author of over 220 publications in peer-reviewed journals (h-index=80).