Professor Dudley Pennell, director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) cardiovascular biomedical research unit (BRU) and the Trust’s cardiovascular magnetic resonance unit (CMR), has been given an NIHR senior investigator award for a four-year term.
The award recognises Professor Pennell’s outstanding contribution to the national health research agenda in cardiology.
Professor Pennell has specialised in CMR for more than 20 years and is a General Medical Council-registered UK specialist in:
- cardiology
- nuclear medicine
- radiology.
He leads research projects on gene mapping, dilated cardiomyopathy and thalassemia. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers on his specialist subjects, including myocardial perfusion imaging and CMR for the early diagnosis of myocardial iron overload, to wide acclaim.
Professor Pennell was instrumental in establishing the genetics and genomics laboratory at Royal Brompton Hospital, a joint venture between the Trust and Imperial College London, and a flagship development of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit (BRU).
The third RAND analysis of influential biomedical and health research, published earlier this year, confirmed the leading role played by researchers at Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals on the global medical research stage.
In cardiovascular medicine, the proportion of Trust research papers quoted in subsequent studies was joint highest. The report highlighted the Trust’s close partnership with Imperial College London, with the two organisations having the most co-authored highly-cited publications (HCPs) compared with all other healthcare and academic partners in England.
RAND Europe is a not-for-profit policy research organisation.