Briefly, tell us about your background and career up to this point?
I grew up in Bolton, Leeds, Manchester and the Wirral. I graduated from medical school at the University of Leeds in 2010, before finally venturing south to London to start core medical training in 2012. My research career started with an academic clinical fellowship on the South London rotation in 2014. I formally joined King’s in 2018, for my PhD funded by the British Heart Foundation, then continued as a post-doc. This was all under the supervision of Professor Divaka Perera, who has been an incredible mentor. Earlier this year I was awarded an NIHR EME Advanced Fellowship and started my Clinical Senior Lecturer post in June.
What is a typical day like for you?
The joy of clinical academia is that no day is typical! One day a week I operate in the cardiac catheterisation suite, performing stent procedures for heart attacks and a variety of other treatments. My research is based around these procedures so it's always a busy day. I run a clinic where I see patients with a variety of heart problems, including those who are involved in our research studies. I’m on-call overnight for the heart attack centre once a week, so the day after can be a struggle! The rest of my time is for other research activities; group and trial meetings, reviewing data, writing, teaching, catching up with our brilliant PhD student Saad and keeping on top of the mountains of both clinical and university e-mails! As part of the fellowship I’m also studying a flexibly taught MSc in health data science, so certainly plenty to keep me busy!
What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
Just keep working hard and doing what you’re doing. Life works out. Being kind and helping those around you ultimately pays off.
Do you have any current projects that you’d like to tell us about?
I’m very excited about the fellowship project which has just been funded. It was a pilot funding call from the NIHR to fund both a 5 year fellowship and a randomised trial in one award. At the core is a randomised trial to test whether coronary artery stenting helps people with a particular type of heart failure called HFpEF. It’s an important question and fits with lots of other work going on in the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences, so a big opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from across the school and wider faculty.
Alongside the main project there is a work package looking to improve the representation of women and minority ethnic groups in cardiovascular trials, a data science project to mirror trial outcomes from electronic health records and some mechanistic work looking at epicardial and coronary microvascular function in the HFpEF population. It’s also going to be my first experience of leading a big project, so lots of responsibility but I’m excited for the challenge.
Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
I hope to have made a name for myself as someone who can run good trials. Ultimately I want to build a portfolio of trials and support the translational pathway in cardiovascular medicine at KCL; we have great resources to develop new healthcare technology and trials are a key step in bringing those into the clinical world.
What do you do with your time outside academia/work?
With a young family (a 3-year-old and an 8-week-old baby) there’s not a lot of time for recreation, but I love spending time with them. My 3-year-old certainly keeps me on my toes and I’ve had to learn more about construction vehicles, trains and planes than I ever thought I would! My wife is from Cyprus, so on our annual leave we tend to try to get over there for some sunshine.
What is your proudest accomplishment?
Not fully achieved yet, but we’re getting towards finishing the CHIP-BCIS3 trial, which is led by Professor Divaka Perera. It’s the first trial I’ve been involved with from inception, and it’s a fantastic feeling to be reaching the finish line. The trial investigates whether small heart pumps make stent procedures safer, and it’s a question the international cardiology community has been asking for a long time, so it’s very exciting to be this close to being able to answer the question.
QUICK-FIRE:
Favourite London restaurant: The Riding House Café, where I met my wife
Favourite book: The Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov
Favourite scientist: Max Planck
Coffee order: Flat white