Axel Heitmueller has been involved with Imperial College Health Partners since its conception in 2011 as an Interim Director and joined the Partnership full-time in August 2013 as Director of Strategy and Commerce.

Prior to joining the Partnership, Axel was Executive Director of Strategy and Business Development at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He brings a broad range of experience from academia and central government where he was Deputy Director and Chief Analyst at the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit in the Cabinet Office and No 10. He was also employed as research associate at the Centre for New and Emerging Markets (CNEM) at the London Business School.

He received his Ph.D. in economics in the Scottish Doctoral Programme in 2003. His main areas of interest are international migration and in particular Brain Drain theory and East-West labour mobility, informal care markets and disability, private-public sector pay differentials, and labour markets in transition economies. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Population Economics, the Scottish Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Health Economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in July 2002 and became a Research Fellow in April 2004.