Spotlight on... Kurinchi Gurusamy

What is your role and what does it involve?

I am Professor of Evidence-based Medicine and Surgery, Head of Research in the Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, and Lead for the Surgical and Interventional Group (SIG) at Comprehensive Clinical Trials Unit (CCTU@UCL).

As Head of Research in the Division of Surgery and Interventional Science, I am involved in guiding researchers in their grants and fellowship applications, and in internal selections for grants or fellowship applications where there is a limit in the number of people who can apply.

In my role as the Surgical and Interventional Group (SIG), I provide leadership for how trials should be supported by SIG and am part of the leadership team of CCTU@UCL.

In my role as Professor of Evidence-based Medicine and Surgery, I find the best evidence to guide the management of health conditions. I teach students about research methods. I also develop new methodology for evidence-based management of people with different health conditions.

How long have you been at UCL and what was your previous role?

I have been at UCL for more than 18 years. I joined UCL as a PhD student, became a teaching fellow, a lecturer, reader, and then a professor. My previous roles have also involved research as a PhD student and subsequently teaching and research.

What working achievement or initiative are you most proud of?

I am one of the top 2% of scientists who have published their research in Medicine since 1960, based on the standardized information on citations, h-index, co authorship-adjusted hm-index, citations to papers indifferent authorship positions and a composite indicator. More than 50 of my publications have been used for national or international clinical practice guidelines. A list of important national and international guidelines that have used my research to draw clinical guidelines are listed on my website. 

Tell us about a project you are working on now which is top of your to-do list

I believe that equity can be achieved through biomedical research and the resulting improvement in health. However, an estimated 85% of biomedical research is wasted. Some of the reasons for this include asking questions of little importance to stakeholders, poor design, poor conduct, poor analysis, and poor reporting.

I am currently developing algorithms that will allow people with minimal statistical knowledge to perform advanced statistical analysis. Of course, they need to understand some mechanisms around correlations between data to perform these advanced statistical analyses! However, I am hopeful that I will be able to explain correlations between data through examples. 

I am also planning to run workshops on how to avoid research waste. My first workshop was on 14 June!

Through these measures, I hope to improve the quality of health research and allow the finite resources available in the best way possible to achieve equity.

What is your favourite album, film and novel?

Novels: Agatha Christie's mystery novels, and the Sherlock Holmes novels by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Films: The Star Wars series. I enjoyed every film in the main series. My favourite quote is, “Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering”.

What is your favourite joke (pre-watershed)?

I have very little humour, but enjoy parody. I can hardly remember jokes! I take Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s advice (through his character Sherlock Holmes) about filling the brain with only the information needed!

What advice would you give your younger self?

• Success and failure are simply a matter of perception. Don’t let others define your success or failure. 
• Be prepared to learn new things to increase your chances of success. 
• Put in your best effort to succeed but accept that you will succeed sometimes and fail others. 
• Be prepared to learn from any failures. 
• Be prepared to change paths if the situation warrants: that is not accepting defeat. You can only lose if you accept defeat. 
• You can never lose by helping others unconditionally.

What would it surprise people to know about you?

People are surprised to know that I have autism and face major difficulties in things in day-to-day life that people take for granted including language perception, body language perception, and remembering faces and names.