Miles Parkes is Consultant Gastroenterologist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and has been instrumental in unravelling the genetic basis of inflammatory bowel disease. He foresaw the critical importance of large cohorts enabling robust human genetic association studies. He was one of the founders, and the first co-chair, of the International IBD Genetics Consortium. More recently he initiated the national NIHR IBD Bioresource, a cohort of tens of thousands of meticulously characterised patients who can be contacted for recall studies by both academic and industry researchers. By its mere scale, the IBD Bioresource affords opportunities for studies that extend far beyond genetics.