Irene Tracey is a distinguished academic and the current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. After graduating from Oxford, she specialised in Magnetic Resonance Imaging at Harvard Medical School before returning to Oxford in 1997 as a founding member of the Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain, where her research focused on how the brain processes pain and consciousness.

Notably, she co-authored the University Spin Out Review with Andrew Williamson of Cambridge Innovation Capital.