King's College London

The Centre for Academic Surgery was recently established as a means of bringing together academic surgeons who are leaders in their fields nationally and internationally, to create an interdisciplinary community spanning King’s and its NHS partner organisations. The Centre fosters research and education collaborations, promotes and develops surgical and academic knowledge to drive improvements in patient outcomes and supports surgeons at all career stages to engage in surgical and research education and to generate their own research.

Professor Modarai aims to further develop the Centre into a highly visible and sustainable academic network that strengthens collaboration, accelerates innovation and enhances the national and international profile of surgical research at King’s. Central to this will be reinforcing the contribution of academic surgery to King’s Health Partners’ ambition to transform healthcare through integrated clinical academic partnership. As KHP Professor of Surgery, he will chair the KHP Board of Surgery, ensuring that its academic priorities are aligned with clinical innovation, connecting surgical expertise with KHP’s wider objectives.

Professor Modarai brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to these roles and has served as Deputy Director of the Centre since its inception last year.

A vascular surgeon scientist, he has been a Consultant Vascular Surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust since 2012. He has held successive fellowships from the British Heart Foundation and was awarded a Hunterian Professorship by The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 2017. He currently leads translational programmes spanning vascular biology, imaging science, computational modelling and data enabled research, leveraging international multidisciplinary collaborative teams.

Professor Modarai is also Director of the King’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Translational Research in Advanced Therapies, leading a cross-disciplinary training programme. He established the King’s Cardiovascular Biobank, creating a critical platform for linking biological samples with clinical and imaging data at scale. He is Head of Section and Clinical Theme Lead for the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences at King’s, where he has driven integration between research and clinical strengths.

He currently serves as the KHP Cardiovascular Clinical Academic Grouping Co Lead, working across partner Trusts to strengthen clinical academic collaboration. He recently completed a term as President of the British Society of Endovascular Therapy and has long-standing experience supporting the development of clinical academics through his role as NIHR Integrated Academic Training Lead for Surgery. As such, he has extensive experience of convening multidisciplinary communities, developing academic careers and representing surgical research at national and international level.