Notable Alumni

Mr Duncan Bew (MBBS Medicine, 1998) - Trauma Surgeon, King’s College Hospital

Duncan Bew is a consultant trauma surgeon and Clinical Lead for Trauma and Emergency Surgery at King’s College Hospital. He carried out life-saving surgery on survivors of the 2017 London Bridge terrorist attacks.

A prominent campaigner against knife and gun violence, he was invited to Downing Street as the Government searched for a way forward. Growing Against Violence, the charity Mr Bew co-founded and which educates school children against the dangers of gang membership and knife violence, has reached over 180,000 students across 700 schools in London and beyond, since 2008.

Mr Bew has contributed to The Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime knife crime strategy, and advised the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on youth violence. He featured in the Evening Standard’s The Progress 1,000: London’s most influential people 2019. Graduated from Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1998.

Professor Dr Bushra Mateen (PhD Chemistry, 1976) - Professor Emeritus and former Vice-Chancellor, Lahore College for Women University

Over a career spanning four decades, Dr Mateen led one of Pakistan’s most prestigious institutions through significant change, whilst teaching and inspiring several generations of women students. After teaching at the Lahore College for Women for a number of years, Dr Mateen became principal of the College in 1989. In that position, she led the College’s upgrade to University status in 2002, at which point she was promoted as its Vice-Chancellor. She retired in December 2010.

Dr Mateen taught master's level organic chemistry, biochemistry and environmental chemistry for more than 37 years. She transformed the College to the status of University, not only in name, but worked to raise the standards so that it became synonymous with quality and excellence. Despite her administrative commitment, she always managed to retain a strong link to teaching and research. She taught MS classes alongside supervising several doctorate students. Her excellence in research was internationally recognized by her appointment as UNESCO Chair for Women in Science in Asian Region in 2005, through which she pioneered research in “Arsenic in ground water in various regions in Pakistan”. She has about 30 research publications in the field of Chemistry to her credit. In 2012 she was awarded Tamgha Imtiaz (medal of distinction) for her work in the field of education.

Mr Dara Nasr (LLB Law, 1996) - Managing Director, Twitter UK

Appointed Managing Director of Twitter UK in 2016, when he was only 40. Joined Twitter in 2012, initially as Head of Sales. As Managing Director, he is responsible for delivering the UK strategy, leading on UK and international commercial partnerships, and looking after the staff in the UK office, which now number more than 300. Previously worked at Google/YouTube and Eurosport.

An advocate of making the workplace a happy one, Mr Nasr has been involved in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) England’s My Whole Self campaign, and is a volunteer mentor with The Media Trust. He serves on the Digital Advisory Panel of the Gambling Commission, and featured in the Evening Standard’s The Progress 1,000: London’s most influential people 2019. Graduating from the School of Law in 1996, Mr Nasr has been active with QMUL in recent years, returning to campus to give a careers’ talk to students and recent graduates in 2017, and was interviewed for QMA Magazine 2018.

Chief Dr Joseph Dion Ngute (LLM Law, 1978) - Prime Minister, Head of Government, Republic of Cameroon

Appointed Prime Minister of Cameroon in 2019. During his first 18 months as PM, Dr Dion Ngute has personally led peace-seeking missions to the troubled Anglophone north west and south west regions of the country; promoted bilingualism and multi-culturalism, whilst leading a campaign against hate speech; and overseen initiatives to encourage growth, investment, jobs creation and the modernisation of the Republic of Cameroon’s economy.

Dr Dion Ngute has served in the Cameroonian government since 1997, including positions at the Ministry of External Relations and at the Presidency of the Republic, and he has represented Cameroon on both the UN Human Rights Council and the African Commission for Human and People’s Rights. He has a Bachelor degree in Law from the University of Yaoundé, and a PhD from the University of Warwick. During the 1980s he was a professor of business law at the University of Yaoundé.

Dr Martine Rothblatt (PhD Medical Ethics, 2001) - Entrepreneur; Founder, Chairman and CEO, United Therapeutics Corporation

Serial entrepreneur and innovator, Dr Martine Rothblatt is Chairman and CEO of United Therapeutics, a US publicly traded biotech company with a mission to develop treatments for rare diseases. She began the company in 1996, after one of her daughters was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension, which at that time was untreatable. Dr Rothblatt leads the company’s efforts to create novel therapies for rare diseases, to decode the pharmacogenomic properties of medicines and to manufacture transplantable organs the body doesn’t reject. She is the inventor of United Therapeutics’ recently-awarded patent on a brain-computer interface device for patients with debilitating cognitive conditions.

Dr Rothblatt is the author of recent books on xenotransplantation (Your Life or Mine), cyberethics (Virtually Human) and non-binary gender identity (Transgender to Transhuman). She led the first efforts to create transgender health law standards.

Dr Rothblatt previously co-founded and led satellite radio firm, Sirius XM, and launched other satellite systems for navigation and international television broadcasting. She has designed the world’s first electric helicopter and piloted it to a Guinness world record for speed, altitude and flight duration.

She delivered the John Vane Lecture at the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI) in 2014. In 1995 she endowed the PPH Cure Foundation, which later merged into the William Harvey Medical Research Foundation, a US charitable organization that she continues to serve as President. The Foundation raises funds for the WHRI, which was established by the late Sir John Vane in 1986.

Professor Karen Vousden CBE (BSc Genetics & Microbiology, 1978; PhD Genetics, 1982) - Chief Scientist, Cancer Research UK

Professor Vousden has been Chief Scientist at Cancer Research UK since 2016, and Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute since 2017. She runs a world-leading research programme focusing on the tumour suppressor protein p53, which plays an important role in cancer prevention.

Prior to joining CRUK in 2016, Professor Vousden was Director of the CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, a role she held from 2003. Before that she was at the National Cancer Institute in the USA, where she was Director of the Molecular Virology and Carcinogenesis Section at the ABL-Basic Research programme and then Chief of the Regulation of Cell Growth Laboratory.

Professor Vousden has been elected to numerous Fellowships, including Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Karen's awards include the Tenovus Gold Medal, the Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins Medal, the Royal Medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Mike Price Gold Medal. She was made a Commander of the British Empire for services to clinical science.

Professor Fiona Wilcox (MBBS Medicine, 1986) - HM Senior Coroner for Inner West London

Professor Wilcox has been HM Senior Coroner for Inner West London since April 2011; in 2018 she led the Grenfell Tower fire inquest. Professor Wilcox serves as Chair of the Medico-legal committee of the Coroners' Society of England and Wales, and Joint Chair of the Cadre of Coroners with special interest and training in the management of mass fatality incidents and disaster victim identification.

She is Honorary Professor of Forensic Medical Sciences at QMUL’s William Harvey Research Institute, and teaches on the MA Degree course in Forensic Medicine at QMUL. She also teaches courses at Middle Temple, Bart's Anatomy Society, the police, and on the Paediatric Law and Ethics course at Imperial College London.

After qualifying in Medicine at the Medical College of St Bartholomew's Hospital, Professor Wilcox practiced as a GP in the East End of London for 21 years before retraining as a barrister, qualifying in Law in 2008. She practiced as a barrister in criminal law, professional negligence and personal injury. She has broad experience as a Coroner, having previously held four Assistant Deputy Coroner positions in East London, Southwark, North London and Kent. She is a Fellow and Vice-President of the Faculty of Forensic & Legal Medicine, Royal College of Physicians.

Professor Lord Robert Winston (MBBS Medicine, 1964) - Professor of Science and Society, Imperial College London; Fertility Expert and TV Presenter

Lord Winston is Professor of Science and Society and Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London.

In the 1970s he developed gynaecological surgical techniques that improved fertility treatments. He later pioneered new treatments to improve in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and developed pre-implantation diagnosis. He now runs a research programme at the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology at Imperial College that aims to improve human transplantation.

Lord Winston has over 300 scientific publications about human reproduction and the early stages of pregnancy. He is Chairman of the Genesis Research Trust - a charity which raised over £13 million to establish the Institute of Reproductive and Developmental Biology and which now funds high quality research into women’s health and babies.

Lord Winston serves on the Board of Trustees of the UK Stem Cell Foundation. He is a co-founder and champion of the Wohl Reach Out Lab (ROL), located at Imperial College – ROL is a dedicated STEM space for children aged 6 to 18, with a focus on enabling them to experience practical science and to conduct experiments first hand.