Rehan Kazi
Completion date: 2007
Supervisor: Professor Kevin Harrington
Dr Rehan Kazi is Senior Clinical Research Physician for Parexel International, a contract research organisation based in London that carries out early stage human studies for new pharmaceutical products. Rehan graduated from the ICR in 2007. His PhD, which investigated multiple methods of assessing the voice of patients who have lost their voice box through cancer, won him two awards: The Robert Maxwell Byers Award from the American Head and Neck Society and an award from the British Association of Surgical Oncology.
After obtaining his MBBS and Master of Surgery in India, Rehan moved to the UK and became a registrar in the Head and Neck Unit at The Royal Marsden. Rehan completed his PhD at The Institute of Cancer Research while he continued to work as a registrar and obtained his FRCS from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow.
The partnership and proximity of The Royal Marsden and the ICR made this possible: “I was able to meet my two supervisors, Professor Kevin Harrington and Mr Peter Rhys-Evans, at either site as they worked across both the organisations. I could recruit patients from The Royal Marsden then quickly walk over and work on my thesis at the ICR’s library.”
Rehan maintains that the name and reputation of the ICR and the people that work here has been a huge boost to his career: “It has great facilities, is a world class organisation and some of the best minds in the world work at the ICR, but the single most important thing for me was the supervisors that I worked under. They are some of the brightest people and because of them I become a Team Leader in the Head and Neck Unit at The Royal Marsden and continued the path of my career to where I am now.”
After working as a Team Leader at the RMH, Rehan became a Principal Fellow, followed by Associate Professor in the Clinical Trials Unit at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust. He then received a Chair in the Head and Neck Cancer Research Unit of Manipal University in India, and took up his current position as Senior Clinical Research Physician in mid 2012, where he continues to work in early stage clinical trials for all areas of medicine.
