Cardiology Section President announces winner of UK research contest

Dr Christopher Rajkumar, a cardiology registrar and researcher at Imperial College London, has won a major competition of UK research run by the Royal Society of Medicine’s Cardiology Section. 

Dr Rajkumar was awarded the 2023 President’s Prize by Dr Sukhjinder Nijjer, President of the RSM Cardiology Section, at a special event at the RSM on 20 September 2023. 

He received a gold medal and a prize of £1,000 for his study ‘The role of the collateral circulation in stable coronary artery disease: An invasive placebo-controlled study’. 

He was one of 10 cardiology trainees who were invited to present at the event, after their abstracts were shortlisted by the prize judges. 

The second prize of £500 went to Dr George Joy, Clinical Research Fellow at Barts Heart Centre and UCL, for ‘Non-invasive detection of microstructural and electrophysiological abnormalities in subclinical and overt hypertrophic cardiomyopathy’. 

Exceptionally this year, a bronze prize was also awarded, in recognition of the close competition. This went to Dr Arun Sau, a British Heart Foundation Clinical Research Fellow, for his paper: ‘Neural network-derived electrocardiographic features predict all-cause mortality and have important phenotypic and genotypic associations’. 

Speaking at the event, Dr Nijjer said: “We have been incredibly impressed … all of you deserve to be finalists here at this competition.  

“The presentations have been clear, the way you’ve answered the questions has been robust and it’s great to see you are clearly going to be future academics.” 

The President’s Prize is awarded every year for the best original research by a specialist registrar in cardiology who has received all or part of their training at recognised centres in the UK. 

Bookmark our prizes and awards page to stay up to date with this and other prizes, including entry requirements and deadlines.