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 modelling and Neural Networks.

He has published more than 500 peer reviewed publications including 70 book chapters with an overall h-index of 52 and more than 10000 citations(Google Scholar and Research Gate).

 

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 100 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 60 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 has supervised 4 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 £4.5 M in research funding through 20 grants.

He completed his MBA in Warwick and he specializes in High Performance Teams,Change Management especially following Mergers and Acquisitions as also in Leadership,Personal Coaching and Mentoring in relationship to benchmarking and performance.His MBA dissertation was focusing on social networks,mentoring attributes and  academic performance.

 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.

He has been a  member of NICE  and Health Technology Assessment Committees and Module Director of MSc of Health Policy and Tutor in MRES of Surgical Robotics at the IC.

Within the last five years he has successfully supervised more than 70 researchers including undergraduates, postgraduates, PhD (12 completed theses), MD, MSc, MRes, BSc students. Professor Athanasiou supervises bioengineers, economists, clinicians and scientists. Currently he has 6 PhD students. 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 50 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 entitled "Key topics in Surgical Research and Methodology" (more than 1000 pages) and the second "Evidence Synthesis in Healthcare" (350 pages) which 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.