London: India-born brain trauma expert David Krishna Menon, who is a professor of anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge, has been conferred one of the highest British honours by King Charles III for "services to neurocritical care". Professor Menon was conferred with a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by the 75-year-old monarch in his annual Birthday Honours list over the weekend.
Menon is the Head of Division of Anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge and is trained in Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry. He founded the Neurosciences Critical Care Unit (NCCU) at Addenbrooke's National Health Service (NHS) teaching hospital in Cambridge.
He has gained prominence for his global clinical and research leadership in traumatic brain injury. "I am deeply honoured to be nominated for a CBE and accept it on behalf of all those who have worked with me during what has been - and continues to be - a very rewarding career," said Professor Menon.
About David Krishna Menon's past
David Krishna Menon is the son of PGK Menon, a senior official at All India Radio (AIR) in Delhi. He was raised in the city before going on for training in the field of medicine with his research interests focussed on neurocritical care, secondary brain injury, neuroinflammation, and metabolic imaging of acute brain injury.
According to the Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust, as the first director of NCCU, he pioneered the first recognised training programme for specialist neurocritical care in the UK. Protocols developed improved clinical outcomes in severe head injury and the management of acute intracranial haemorrhage.
Menon has been an intensive care consultant on the NCCU since 1993, and remains active as a full member of the neurocritical care clinical team. He is also a director of research, principal investigator in the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and principal investigator in the van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, at the University of Cambridge.
Menon's shining achievements
Following two terms as a senior Investigator in the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), he was appointed emeritus NIHR Senior Investigator in 2019. His sparkling achievements also include being a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a professorial fellow in the medical sciences at Queens' College, Cambridge University.
Listing his many achievements, CUH said the respected medic jointly leads the European Union-funded EURO 30-million CENTER-TBI Consortium, the International Initiative on TBI Research, and the multi-funder UK national Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Research Platform. He jointly led the "Lancet Neurology Commissions on TBI" in 2017 and 2022 and was executive editor of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group Report on Acquired Brain Injury 2019.
Menon has been an applicant or co-applicant on awarded grants totalling over GBP 50 million. He has over 650 peer-reviewed publications and since 2021 has been continuously rated as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate, a global leader in providing trusted insights and analytics. The Acute Brain Injury Program at Cambridge, which he founded, has supported over 50 PhD studentships, and nurtured several senior investigators across clinical and basic neuroscience. His CBE from the King this year comes alongside that of another Indian-origin professional, recognised for "services to transport".
In separate news, Shrinivas R Kulkarni, an Indian-origin professor of astronomy from the US was nominated last month for the prestigious Shaw Prize in Astronomy for his ground-breaking discoveries about millisecond pulsars, gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and other variable or transient astronomical objects.
(PTI)
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