Zeshan Qureshi Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Education
The “Zeshan Qureshi Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Education” was launched in 2014. It aims to acknowledge the efforts of junior doctors and medical students, who in their spare time, have been setting up and contributing to projects to help their fellow students.
Entries for the 2020 Award are now closed
Winners of the Zeshan Qureshi Award for Outstanding Achievement in Medical Education 2019
Ricky Ellis
Urology ST4
Winner – 2020
Ricky is a Urology Registrar and Intercollegiate Research Fellow, currently undertaking a PhD in Medical Education. He holds the belief that everyone should have access to good education, supportive mentors and affordable resources to enable them to achieve their full potential, and passionately believes that no student or doctor should experience financial barriers to learning. He has therefore worked tirelessly to create peer-reviewed textbooks and revision courses that are affordable and accessible to all. His research aims to characterise differential attainment in surgical examinations in order to enable equity and fairness in training and career progression. He dedicates most of his free time to training and empowering others to develop themselves as clinicians, trainers and leaders.
Setthasorn Zhi Yang Ooi
3rd Year Medical Student, Cardiff University School of Medicine
Runner Up – 2020
Sett’s primary academic interest lies in global surgery, clinical neuroscience and medical education, and he is deeply passionate about education equity for international students and underprivileged students. Sett has been involved in various medical education initiatives through several national and international committees such as his role as President of the Cardiff University Surgical Society (CUSS) and the Cardiff Healthcare International Perspective Society (CHIPS) as well as Vice Chair of Internal Affairs in the Neurology and Neurosurgery Interest Group (NANSIG). He strongly believes in the role of mentorship and has found himself in the position where he has had the privilege to mentor prospective and current medical students internationally.
George W X Barker
Final Year Medical Student, University College London
Runner Up – 2020
After moving to London from Merseyside, George has completed his studies at University College London. Between ward rounds, clinics, and volunteering in intensive care during the COVID-19 pandemic, George volunteered for Sexpression:UK, a charity delivering comprehensive and LGBT+ inclusive relationships and sex education in secondary schools. He served as National Director, with highlights including BBC interviews, speaking at the House of Lords, and lobbying the Department for Education to improve the curriculum. Alongside completing other medical education projects, George’s clinical interests are prehospital emergency medicine, anaesthetics and space medicine, having attended courses at the European Space Agency. In 2021 he was named national LGBT+ Undergraduate of the Year.
Ashwin Venkatesh
Highly Commended 2020
As an undergraduate, Ashwin Venkatesh became embedded as a researcher within Polygeia, a Student-led Global Health Thinktank, which prompted him to recognise prevalent public health issues and strive towards equity in access and opportunity for quality healthcare and education. He was able to publish his work investigating leprosy in vulnerable populations in India in online journals and present at the Annual Wellcome Collection Conference and was subsequently invited to the House of Lords which enabled fruitful discussions with leading policymakers. This served as a platform for Ashwin to visit India and Nepal the following summer, where he spent a one-month observership at the Aravind Eye Hospital before heading to the remote hillside village of Labse in the earthquake-ravaged district of Sindhupalchok, teaching English and Mathematics in a local primary school. These experiences grounded him immensely and made him passionate to engage widely with people from all backgrounds to promote their interests, wellbeing and development.
Mohammed Ehsaanuz Zaman
Highly Commended – 2020
Throughout his medical school career, George has been an avid champion of medical education. George has always found ways to engage and improve medical education of his peers and juniors, and always promotes student and junior doctor participation in education. His contributions to this effort have seen him awarded several prizes throughout his degree, and, most recently, his commitment was recognised through becoming a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Dillon Vyas
University of Leeds, MBChB – Medicine and Surgery
Winner – 2019
Dillon’s interests in medical education started when he got involved with the Leeds Medical Education Academy (LMEA). LMEA is a week-long summer school for widening participation sixthform students to give them exposure to what it’s like being a medical student through workshops and lectures themed around different specialties. In his 2nd year he led the Academic Medicine day and in his 4th year he led the Paediatrics day. This year, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant, he’s been given the task to coordinate the first ever virtual summer school.
George Solomou
4th year Graduate - entry medical student
Runner Up – 2019
George is currently taking a year out of his studies to pursue a full-time research degree to study and characterise xenograft mouse models of diffuse adult glial tumours of the brain, for which he is granted three scholarships/research grants. He is primarily interested in pursuing a career in academic neurosurgical oncology, dreaming of being able to operate on brain tumours using cutting edge technology, including intra-operative adjuncts. His previous work has been recognised with national awards from the British Society for Nanomedicine and British Association of Clinical Anatomists (Conrad Lewin prize). He is currently the leading investigator of a UK and Ireland prospective cohort study, evaluating resection rates and adjuncts used in theatre for the surgical excision of high-grade gliomas.
Harry Carr
Final year MBBS student
Runner Up – 2019
Harry is a final year medical student at Newcastle University with aspirations for a career in academic and operative neurosurgery. Currently he oversees several Regional, National and International academic committees and organisations dedicated to medical education and collaborative research with special interests in the neurosciences, surgery and space/extreme environment medicine.
William Bolton
MBChB, PhD Candidate, BSc (Hons) Medical Imaging
Runner Up – 2019
Will has developed himself as a medical educator throughout his early career. As an FY1, he taught physician associates their surgical curriculum at a local trust during their placement there. He then became a Clinical Research Fellow and during the last three years has taken time out of his clinical training working as a research in Global Surgery. As well as the research projects he has co-led training courses for junior doctors in Sierra Leone, as well as supervising a number of BSc, MSc and medical students at the University of Leeds.
George Choa
Graduate, University College London Medical School
Highly Commended – 2019
Throughout his medical school career, George has been an avid champion of medical education. George has always found ways to engage and improve medical education of his peers and juniors, and always promotes student and junior doctor participation in education. His contributions to this effort have seen him awarded several prizes throughout his degree, and, most recently, his commitment was recognised through becoming a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Dr Matthew Walton
International diploma in mountain medicine, foundation doctor training in the NHS
Runner up – 2019
Resilience film project – produced films to create a dialogue around emergency workers’ mental health
Ter-Er Kusu-Orkar
Academic foundation Doctor year 1
Highly Commended – 2019
Ter-Er is a foundation doctor, pursuing a career in cardiothoracic surgery, who has used every opportunity to further the education of others. From creating resources for his medical school’s clinical skills department to developing programmes for his universities athletic union and hosting a national conference, teaching is definitely a passion for Ter-Er.
Fatima Ali
5th year medical student at Imperial College London
Highly Commended – 2019
Fatima is a fifth-year medical student at Imperial College London and has completed a BSc degree in Business Management in Healthcare at Imperial College Business School. She has been avidly involved in social justice and health-peace advocacy on a local, national and international level. She is passionate about creating relevant and inclusive quality medical education for all and ensuring innovative practices are used to bridge the gaps in access to education.
Sashiananthan Ganesananthan
Penultimate year medical student, Cardiff University
Highly Commended – 2019
Sashi is a penultimate year medical student from Cardiff University, currently intercalating at Imperial College London. He has a deep interest in cardiovascular/gastroenterology research and medical education Progressing through medical school, he found himself in a position where he had the privilege of helping other students grasp concepts of basic sciences as a second-year student. With these efforts, Sashi helped raise money for Welsh Hearts and British Heart Foundation.
Jack Whiting
FY1 at John Radcliffe Hospital
Highly Commended – 2019
Jack discovered a passion for medical education whilst at medical school, and in particularly has developed a dedication for widening participation – enabling young people from non-traditional backgrounds to make competitive applications to study medicine. He has mentored on the nationally recognised BrightMed programme since 2014 and has helped over 500 students. Jack has taken the lead on designing, creating and delivering his own full day sessions, including a neurology themed escape room and a gastroenterology walkthrough (conversion of teaching buildings into a full GI tract – think Rick and Morty Anatomy Park! He has also completed and published several research projects on medical education and widening participation in medicine. Jack was awarded the National Education Opportunities Student of the Year Award in 2018, recognising his innovative practice in WP, and the impact of his work.
Milani Sivapragasam
MD-MSc Candidate, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
Highly Commended – 2019
Milani has consistently emerged as a student leader in undergraduate medical education (UME). Passionate about a training culture that values inquiry, she worked hard to cultivate such a learning environment at McGill. She became the inaugural student representative to an UME committee on Scholarship, Critical Thinking and Knowledge Translation. Here, she led the redevelopment of a foundational course entitled Research Fundamentals. She also served as Editor-in-Chief of the McGill Journal of Medicine where she increased submission rates from students and set up a sustainable infrastructure for the student-run journal. At the national level, Milani was nominated to the Board of Directors of the Canadian Association for Medical Education (CAME) and has published two manuscripts with the Clinician Investigator Trainee Association of Canada (CITAC).
Adam Vaughan
Undergraduate Degree in Medicine and Surgery – MBBS, Newcastle University
Highly Commended – 2019
Adam began his MedEd career by volunteering to teach with the Newcastle MedEd Society. He then secured a place on committee as Year 2 Lead where he was responsible for creating a new revision course to supplement the university’s new curriculum. They trialled new formats that have never been tried before, including introducing monthly lectures, and using new software to allow students to ask questions anonymously to increase participation. From this, he created two research projects with his team, which they presented at this year’s TASME conference: “Near Peer Teaching in Newcastle University MedEd Society: Are Regular Revision Lectures a Good Addition to Pre-Exam Preparation Sessions” and “Anonymous Questioning: Breaking Down Barriers to Learning”.
Dr Daniel Purchase
Hull UniversityTeaching Hospitals
Highly Commended – 2019
Daniel has shown great dedication and commitment towards developing himself as a medical educator over the last 6 years. Putting himself out there, and receiving regular feedback from his students and peers, has taught him a lot. He has seized opportunities to help educate others in a variety of different roles. Daniel believes continued experience in education is vital for the current generation of medical professionals, as they strive to keep pace with scientific research, technological advances and their novel applications to medicine.