Who is Prof. David Krishna Menon, the India-born brain trauma expert honoured by King Charles?

“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.

Who is Prof David Krishna Menon?

Prof Menon founded the Neurosciences Critical Care Unit (NCCU) at Addenbrooke’s National Health Service (NHS) teaching hospital in Cambridge . He is known for his global clinical and research leadership in traumatic brain injury.

Menon, the son of P G K Menon – a senior official at All India Radio (AIR) – was raised in Delhi before training in Medicine, Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education & Research (JIPMER) in Pondicherry, where his research interests focused on neurocritical care, secondary brain injury, neuroinflammation, and metabolic imaging of acute brain injury.

What are his achievements at NCCU?

As the first director of NCCU, Prof. Menon pioneered the first recognised training programme for specialist neurocritical care in the UK, according to the Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) NHS Foundation Trust.

Since 1993, Prof. Menon has been an intensive care consultant at NCCU, and 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.

He was appointed emeritus National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator in 2019. Menon is a founding fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a professorial fellow in the medical sciences at Queens’ College, Cambridge University.

What are his other achievements in the field of medicine?

CUH said Prof Menon 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 was the executive editor of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group Report on Acquired Brain Injury 2019 and jointly led the “Lancet Neurology Commissions on TBI” in 2017 and 2022.

Prof Menon has been an applicant or co-applicant on awarded grants totalling over GBP 50 million, and has over 650 peer-reviewed publications. He founded the Acute Brain Injury Program at Cambridge, which has supported over 50 PhD studentships.