The British Science Association (BSA) has announced that Professor the Lord Ara Darzi of Denham will take up Presidency of the Association from September 2020.

As the Association said in a released statement, Professor Darzi is Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London. He also holds the Paul Hamlyn Chair of Surgery at Imperial College London, and the Institute of Cancer Research and is Executive Chair of the World Innovation Summit for Health in Qatar. He is a Consultant Surgeon at Imperial College Hospital NHS Trust and the Royal Marsden NHS Trust.

A champion of innovation and convergence science, Professor Darzi is renowned for pioneering minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery. He has previously held the role of the parliamentary under-secretary of state for health and is a leading figure in global health policy.

Professor Darzi said: “I was pleased to be asked to take up the Presidency of the British Science Association at a time when healthcare and scientific innovation is at the forefront of the public, media and political agenda. The BSA plays an important role both in engaging under-served audiences and in convening leaders, policy makers and opinion formers across sectors to take ownership of discussions on science that have an impact on people and society.

“I look forward to working with them this coming year to take forward discussions about how we reduce inequalities in healthcare and in access to research and public engagement.”

To note, Darzi was born in Baghdad, Iraq to Armenian parents displaced by the 1915 Armenian Genocide.His family had lived in Erzurum, Ottoman Empire (now Turkey). His paternal great-grandparents, Tatyos and Elbiz Shiroian, had one daughter and four sons. Elbiz and her daughter, Arevalous (Darzi’s grandmother), were the only survivors of the genocide. They fled on foot to northern Iraq with the aid of a friend of Tatyos. Darzi’s father was born in Mosul and his mother was born in Baghdad.