Jean-Frédéric Colombel has been the director of the Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center since January 2013. Professor Colombel began his career at CHU de Lille, France in 1980 where he was Professor of Hepato-Gastroenterology from 1991, and Head of the Department of Gastroenterology from 2010 to 2012. Since 1984, his research has focused on IBD. Thanks to the development of multiple local, national and international collaborations, he has been able to contribute to important advances in the pathophysiology of IBD. Professor Colombel has trained several generations of fellows both in the US and in Europe, and many of them are now key opinion leaders in IBD in their respective countries. This leadership in IBD has been recognized and he was elected as the President of the European Crohn’s and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) (2008–2010) and Chair of the International Organization for the Study of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IOIBD) (2010–2012). Professor Colombel was awarded the United European Gastroenterology Federation (UEGF) Research Prize in 2009 and the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation Clinical Research Award in 2014 and the Sherman Prize in 2018. The main concretisation of Professor Colombel’s work has been the publication as primary author or co-author of more than 1000 peer-reviewed papers, most of them in the domain of IBD. Professor Colombel has been an associate editor of major gastroenterology journals including Gut, Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Gastroenterology (current).