Professor Thanos Athanasiou MD PhD FETCS FRCS

Profesor of Cardiovascular Sciences & Cardiac Surgery, Consultant Cardiac Surgeon

Professor Thanos Athanasiou is a Consultant Cardiothoracic Surgeon at Hammersmith and St Mary's Hospitals and a Professor of Cardiovascular Sciences & Cardiac Surgery in the Division of Surgery at Imperial College London.

He specializes in Complex Aortic Surgery, Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting (CABG), Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery and Robotic Assisted Cardiothoracic Surgery. His institutional responsibility is to lead academic cardiac surgery. His current statistical expertise is on longitudinal data analysis, multilevel modelling, competing risk modelling, Bayesian Hierarchical models and Neural Networks.

He has published more than 367 papers and 63 book chapters with an overall h-index of 33 and more than 2500 citations. Professor Athanasiou’s aims are to translate molecular cardiovascular research (metabolic syndrome, electrophysiological disorders, regenerative platforms and stem cells) with clinical and epidemiological evidence-synthesis studies. At least 50 of his papers have been published in journals with an impact factor above 5 and in the majority of them he is the first, second or last author. During the last year his team have published 62 papers which equates to at least one paper acceptance every week. Every year his h-index increases 3-5 points.

As a clinician-consultant he has built up a research team supported by departmental laboratories aiming to link the clinic to basic science and best evidence. He is currently supervising three Wellcome funded PhD Research Fellows, and his work has been highlighted on the front cover of journals such as the BMJ and the Lancet. This contribution has been considered as important evidence for NICE generated guidelines. Professor Athanasiou has accrued over £2.3 M in research funding through 16 grants.

 He holds the following leadership roles within Imperial College London: 1.Clinical Lead of Complex Aortic Disease; 2.Academic Lead of Cardiovascular Metabonomics; 3.Academic Lead of Surgical Ablation Program; 4.Academic Lead of Cardiac Surgery Research; 5.Academic Lead of Metabolic Surgery; 6.Deputy Head of Academic Performance in the Department of Biosurgery and Cancer; 7.Director of Health Informatics Module in the Health Policy MSc of Imperial College London; 8.Lead of Surgical Quality and Epidemiology; 9.Academic Lead of Robotic Cardiac Surgery 10.Research Project Lead for Cardiac Applications of i-Snake  Robotic translational Program  funded by the Wellcome Trust.

Within the last five years he has successfully supervised more than fifty researchers including undergraduates, postgraduates, PhD (9 completed theses), MD, MSc, MRes, BSc students. Professor Athanasiou supervises bioengineers, economists, clinicians and scientists. Currently he has 9 PhD students. Last year he was awarded the “Best Supervisor Award” in the department of Department of Surgery  at Imperial College London and twice his students have received the “Highest impact Factor Award” of the year. The CVs of his PhD researchers are progressing in such way that most of them have academic positions, national training numbers, funded research fellowships and fast career progression with some of them achieving of h-index of 12 before the age of 30 years old and more than 50 publications. As a result, his trainees (80% of them) have achieved NIHR academic clinical fellow and lecturer status. This demonstrates that his team network has particular characteristics demonstrating coherence and efficiency in collaboration between team members. He also provides clinical teaching and mentoring to his surgical registrars, preparing them for the next level of the clinical responsibility and offering them the opportunity to be trained in modern and minimally invasive surgical techniques.

His team of fifty individuals are amongst the most productive in the world of methodological research and evidence synthesis in surgery with a specific focus on cardiovascular surgery. As a result Professor Athanasiou has generated academic impact during the last three years by authoring and editing two academic textbooks, the first is the most comprehensive methodological handbook in surgery (more than 1000 pages) and the second on Evidence Synthesis in Healthcare (350 pages) reveals his academic involvement in health policy and health technology assessment. He has trained members of his team in meta-analysis, decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, network meta-analysis, multi-parameter evidence synthesis and diagnostic accuracy tests meta-analysis.

Link to the personal web page: http://www.thanosathanasiou.co.uk