Professor Dame Julia Polak
Professor Dame Julia Polak MD DSc FRCPath FMEDSci, was the Director of the Imperial College Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre and is now an Emeritus Professor of Imperial College. She is also, extraordinarily, one of the longest survivors of a heart and lung transplant.
In 1995, as Professor of Endocrine Pathology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (now Imperial College London) she was found to be suffering from one of the conditions she was researching, life-threatening pulmonary hypertension. Her life was saved by a heart and lung transplant performed by her close colleague, Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub. At the time, Julia was the focus of much national and international media attention, and was the inspiration for the novel "Intensive Care" and the play "Change of Heart" by bestselling author and playwright Rosemary Friedman.
It was partly her transplant, together with a strong collaborative relationship with Professor Larry Hench, a materials scientist, that led Julia to found the Imperial College Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Centre. The Centre made huge advances in Tissue Engineering Research and following Professor Polak's retirement the work of the Centre continues in other areas of the College. Julia herself remains passionately committed to tissue engineering as a way of addressing the terrible realities of transplant surgery and is heavily involved in the work of the number of groups at Imperial College.
She also continues to sit on numerous National and International committees on Regenerative Medicine including the MRC, the BBSRC, the Royal Society and the UKSCF. She remains a wonderful ambassador for Imperial College and is coninually invited to give major keynote speeches on Tissue Engineering. The latest one, in the United States drew an audience of 6000 people. She also continues to receiving honours and medals, in recognition of the work she has done over the past 38 years.
For further details, please go to Professor Dame Julia Polak's personal web page.
