About Us

Riaz Agha

BSc(Hons), MBBS, MSc (Oxon), D.Phil (Oxon), FHEA, FRSA, FRSPH, FRCS (Ed), FRCS (Plast.), FEBOPRAS

Consultant Plastic Surgeon, Harley Clinic, Harley Street

Founder and Director

Riaz is a Consultant Plastic Surgeon’s at Harley Clinic in London prestigious Harley Street. He completed his Plastic Surgical training in the prestigious London Deanery training programme rotating around various units in London. Riaz also completed his doctorate at Balliol College, University of Oxford where was a Clarendon Scholar. In 2010, he was awarded a Scholarship from NICE for his project on national surgical surveillance. He subsequently worked with the CQC to improve the coverage and focus of their indicators for acute hospital services. Riaz graduated from Guy’s, King’s and St. Thomas’ Medical School in London with distinctions and a 1st  in his intercalated BSc in Anatomy. He has been awarded over 50 academic prizes, published 200 scientific papers and given 150 presentations at national or international level.

He founded the International Journal of Surgery (IJS) which had an impact factor of 3.357 in 2019. In 2010, he launched IJS Case Reports, Elsevier’s first open access journal.  In 2012, he launched Annals of Medicine and Surgery. All are published by Elsevier and indexed in PubMed. In 2015 IJS Open was launched and he following further launches he now manages a portfolio of 11 journals through the IJS Publishing Group.

He is a council member for the Section of Plastic Surgery at the Royal Society of Medicine with board level appointments to; the Elsevier Editorial System Advisory Board, Map of Medicine Fellows Board and the Association of Surgeons in Training. He sits on the Web Committee for the World Association of Medical Editors and has built two websites for NATO.  He is formerly a Council Member for the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and an Ambassador for Enterprise UK.

Riaz has been a Consultant on healthcare and technology to a member of the Joint Ventures Board of the Bank of Scotland, former Vice-Chairman of the Governing Council of University College London and the former Chairman of the Further Education Council. He was cited as an “inspirational entrepreneur” by The Rt. Hon. John Hutton MP, Former Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform at his keynote speech during Enterprise week 2007. In 2014 he was awarded Freedom of the City of London.

Alex Fowler BSc(Hons), MBBS

Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

Assistant Director

Alex is an academic foundation doctor at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, with an interest in critical care, perioperative medicine and reporting quality. He is the managing editor of Annals of Medicine and Surgery, the assistant director of the Research Registry. He graduated from Barts and the London SMD with a first class honours BSc and distinction in MBBS, he has published over 30 papers in peer reviewed journals and given numerous international and national presentations. Alex assists with methodological issues on all projects done by the ASC, and runs part of the in-house Research Methods Course – specifically the conduct of systematic reviews and meta-analysis. He is a member of the Cochrane Trainee Advisory group.

 

Alex Fowler BSc(Hons), MBBS

Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK

Assistant Director

Alex is an academic foundation doctor at Guys and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, with an interest in critical care, perioperative medicine and reporting quality. He is the managing editor of Annals of Medicine and Surgery, the assistant director of the Research Registry. He graduated from Barts and the London SMD with a first class honours BSc and distinction in MBBS, he has published over 30 papers in peer reviewed journals and given numerous international and national presentations. Alex assists with methodological issues on all projects done by the ASC, and runs part of the in-house Research Methods Course – specifically the conduct of systematic reviews and meta-analysis. He is a member of the Cochrane Trainee Advisory group.

Core Team

Buket is a final year medical student at University College London (UCL). Buket holds a BSc in Surgical Sciences at the UCL Division of Surgery & Interventional Science, working on biomaterials and nanotechnology. Buket is currently on the Steering Committee for the Student Audit & Research in Surgery (STARSurg) national collaborative and was Research Project Manager at AcaMedics, a student-led organisation which facilitates medical student involvement in academic medicine.

She is also Course Director at Medical School Masterclass, a course designed to help aspiring underprivileged medical students in London gain places in top UK medical schools. Medical School Masterclass is endorsed by the Social Mobility Foundation, a national charity that practically supports social mobility in young people from low-income backgrounds.

Buket is responsible promoting and marketing ASC meetings and conferences, as well as liaising with international or national medical and academic communities to build networks for future projects.

Christopher Limb MBBS, MRes, St Helier Hospital, Surrey, UK

Members Officer

Chris is currently in Core Surgical Training in Sussex, aiming for a future in General Surgery. He undertook his undergraduate training in Newcastle during which his interest in academic medicine first started during a Masters of Research. Publications to date include a light-hearted article in the Bulletin of the RCS, “Nominative Determinism in Hospital Medicine”, alongside more academic projects. He has become part of the ASC aiming to contribute to good quality research that will drive clinical excellence in a wider setting.

Yasser Al Omran BSc (Hons), MBBS, MRCS

Publications Manager

Yasser is a Foundation Year 2 Doctor at Oxford University Hospitals. He has a deep interest in research starting when he undertook his intercalated BSc in Neuroscience for which he attained first class honours. He graduated from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry in 2016 for which he attained numerous local and national prizes and gained full Membership to The Royal College of Surgeons of England 1 year later. He is an Associate Editor for Annals of Medicine and Surgery, has presented at numerous national and international conferences and has authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications. His research interests reside within the boundaries of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Kiron Koshy BSc (Hons), MBBS

IJS Careers Editor

Kiron is an academic foundation doctor working in the South Thames Deanery. He undertook his undergraduate training at University College London Medical School, where he was awarded a first class honours intercalated BSc in Clinical Sciences.

He has a strong interest in research, having presented at numerous national and international conferences and published several articles in peer-review journals. Kiron works as an Editor for Annals of Medicine and Surgery.

He has a particular interest in research transparency, about which, he has written a research blog and been invited to health research authority (HRA) meetings. He also curates on the ‘Research Registry’ international research database.

Kiron is a council member for the Section of Plastic Surgery at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) and the lead organiser of the annual Undergraduate Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgery Conference (UPRAS) held at the RSM.

Assistants

Shivanchan Rajmohan Imperial College London, UK

Assistant Secretary

Shiv is a 5th year medical student at Imperial College London, with an interest in Plastics and Trauma & Orthopaedic surgery. Throughout medical school he has achieved distinctions and prizes and has published several articles. Shiv was awarded first class honours for his BSc in Pharmacology.

He has contributed to the development of notable guidelines including the SCARE and PROCESS guidelines, and is a data curator for The Research Registry.

Rachel Thavayogan University of Nottingham, UK

Assistant Membership Officer

Rachel is a 3rd year medical student at the university of Nottingham. She has participated in a number of research projects, and has since developed a special interest in research and surgery.

Charmilie Chandrakumar Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, QMUL, UK

Assistant Publications Manager

Charmilie is a fourth year medical student at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry. Her main interests include trauma and orthopaedics and medical education. Charmilie has held a variety of committee positions within her university’s academic and volunteering societies and attained a first class honours degree in Biomedical Engineering and Clinical Materials. She has also taken part in a variety of research projects from laboratory research to systematic reviews.

Martinique Vella-Baldacchino

Assistant Publicity and Marketing Officer

Martinique Vella-Baldacchino MD (Melit) is a medical graduate from the University of Malta. She is currently an core surgical trainee (orthopaedic stream) based in Oxford.  She has a keen interest in innovation and orthopaedic research particularly oncology and paediatric orthopaedics.

She has been involved in multiple research projects, presented nationally and internationally. Martinique has won several prizes including a Special Commendation Prize from the Royal Society of Medicine, London .

She has been actively involved with the ASC since 2015, playing a major role in surveying the barriers towards research registration.

Advisory Board

Professor Peter McCulloch, Nuffield Department of Surgery, University of Oxford

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Peter’s early research work was on cancer metastasis and gastrectomy technique. However, he has since become interested in patient safety and founded the QRSTU research group which is dedicated to studies of quality and safety interventions in surgery. Current work is funded by a Programme Grant from the NIHR, and involves a synthesis of aspects of the LEAN and CRM interventions to optimise safety performance in surgery.

Peter has advised and participated in the development of the NHS Institute programme “the productive operating theatre” and the Health Foundation sponsored project on Safer Theatre Teams. Peter is actively involved in assisting the Clinical Human Factors Group in their work to improve surgical safety in the UK.

Professor Dennis Orgill, MD, PhD, Division of Plastic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA and Harvard Medical School

Dr. Orgill is Vice Chairman for Quality Improvement in the Department of Surgery at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School. He is a reconstructive plastic surgeon and has a PhD from MIT in Medical Engineering. He is the Director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Wound Care Center and runs a tissue engineering and wound healing Laboratory. His lab at BWH is working to develop better technologies to treat wounds including work with artificial skin, micromechanical forces, platelets and stem cells.  He has consulted for several medical device and start-up companies and is the inventor on several patents. He worked on the team that developed Integra, a skin replacement therapy that has been commercially developed and used successfully on thousands of patients.