Ara Darzi is an academic surgeon who has been a guiding force behind numerous innovations in surgical practice. In addition to his internationally reputed work on minimally invasive surgery, he has helped to pioneer the development of robotic techniques to facilitate medical operations.

Ara was knighted for his services in medicine and surgery in 2002. In 2007, he was introduced to the United Kingdom’s House of Lords as Professor the Lord Darzi of Denham and appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department of Health to lead a major review of the NHS. Upon relinquishing this Ministerial role in 2009, Professor Darzi was appointed by the Prime Minister as the UK’s Global Ambassador for Health and Life Sciences until March 2013. He sat as a Council Member for the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council from 2013-2018, is a Non-Executive Director of NHS Improvement, currently Chairs the Accelerated Access Collaborative and is Director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London. He has been a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council since June 2009 and in 2016, Professor Darzi was awarded the Order of Merit by Her Majesty the Queen for exceptionally meritorious service towards the advancement of medicine.