Professor Prabhakar Rajan from Barts Health promoted to Chair in Urology and Robotic Surgery

North East London Cancer Alliance is pleased to announce the promotion of Consultant Urologist, Prabhakar Rajan, to Professor of Urology and Robotic Surgery at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).

As the main university partner to Barts Health NHS Trust, this appointment is the first chair of urology at Barts for approximately 30 years.

Professor Rajan, a prostate and testis cancer expert, says, “this Chair allows me to galvanise our excellent clinical teams into getting involved in urology innovation and research, and to showcase our talents at Barts, and in hospitals across north east London.

“So far, we have established joint clinical research fellow posts with Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust.  We have also has been awarded two National Institute for Health Research academic clinical fellow posts to train the next generation of academic urologists.” 

Prabhakar studied physiology and medicine at Cambridge University and completed junior surgical and senior urological residencies in Edinburgh and Glasgow, respectively.

After fellowship training in robotic surgery at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden, he was appointed as a consultant in urology within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and moved to London in October 2015.

He joins a famous and respected group of UK urologists to be appointed to a Chair. The last Chair at Barts Health, Professor John Blandy, was one of the giants of British urology, pioneered the transurethral resection of the prostate procedure (a surgical procedure that involves cutting away a section of the prostate, known as TURP) for benign prostate enlargement in the UK and wrote many books on the subject.

Prabhakar is anticipating further strategic recruitments at QMUL in urology, and hopes that he can help to strengthen the profile and outputs of academic urology at QMUL, Barts, and across north east London to levels established by his predecessors.

Dr Angela Wong, Chief Medical Officer for the North East London Cancer Alliance, says “urology is one of the top three cancer types that has the most impact on our performance across north east London, so this appointment has the potential to make a big difference.

“We are therefore delighted that Prabhakar has been promoted to Chair in Urology and Robotic Surgery at Queen Mary University of London, and it is very well deserved. We wish him every success and we are excited to be working with him on a range of projects in the future to help improve outcomes for our local residents.”