King Charles honours India-born brain trauma expert

London: An India-born brain trauma expert and Professor of Anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge has been conferred with one of the high honours by Britain's King Charles III for "services to neurocritical care".

Prof David Krishna Menon, Head of Division of Anaesthesia at the University of Cambridge, 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, who trained in Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry, founded the Neurosciences Critical Care Unit (NCCU) at Addenbrooke’s National Health Service (NHS) teaching hospital in Cambridge and is renowned 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.

Menon, the son of P G K Menon – a senior official at All India Radio (AIR) in Delhi, 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.

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. He is 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".

Dipesh Jayantilal Shah is Chair of National Highways, England, and formerly CEO of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and of large businesses at BP. A graduate of the Universities of London and Warwick, and the Harvard Business School management programme, Shah was previously conferred an OBE for his illustrious career in the public and private sectors.