Dr Omar S Usmani

Omar Usmani MB BS, PhD, FHEA, FRCP, is Clinical Senior Lecturer and Honorary Consultant Physician at the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI), Imperial College London & Royal Brompton Hospital (RBH) .

Dr Usmani qualified in Medicine at King's College London and has dual Specialist Certification in Respiratory and General Internal Medicine. He undertook his Speciality Training at the London Teaching Hospitals of St Thomas', Guy's, King's College and Princess Royal/Bromley.

He studied for his PhD at Imperial College London, during which his research into Medical Inhalers and Aerosol Science was widely publicised; BBCNewsOnline, together with his research into the Treatment and Pharmacology of Cough; BBCNewsOnline.

He received the 2005 NHLI PhD Prize for the Best Thesis submitted and an Alavi-Mandell Award from the American Society of Nuclear Medicine.

Dr Usmani is Group Leader of the Clinical Research Group within the Airway Disease Section at NHLI and a Principal Investigator. He is Clinical Lead of the specialist Chronic Cough Clinic at the Royal Brompton Hospital and is part of the Consultant-led COPD Service.

Dr Usmani's major Research Interests are in Asthma, COPD and Cough and his Research Themes are Inhaled Drug Delivery, Lung Imaging, Small Airways Physiology, Respiratory Pharmacology and Airway Molecular Biology. He is an Associate Editor to the journals Respiration and Cough.

Dr Usmani was recently awarded a Career Development Fellowship by the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) to investigate the relationship between the lung deposition behaviour of inhaled bronchodilator aerosols of different particle size within the airways of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). This is the first time this award has been given to Respiratory Science/Thoracic Medicine research in the UK.

He is Vice-Chair of Drug Delivery to the Lungs (DDL), Europe's premier scientific conference dedicated to pulmonary and nasal drug delivery. He is member of the Long Range Planning Committee Airway Disease Section 5 of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) and Lead of the Section on Regional Lung Analysis of Planar Imaging that is part of the Committee to Standardize Lung Imaging Techniques - one of the key projects of the ISAM (International Society of Aerosols in Medicine) Regulatory Affairs Assembly.

Dr Usmani has established and is the Clinical Lead for NHLI’s Clinical Research Fellow's Initiative (CRFI), which aims to attract, encourage and support clinical trainees interested in undertaking postgraduate research. He is also the Academic Advisor to the North-West London Respiratory Specialist Training Committee. 

Dr Usmani completed CASLAT (Certificate of Advanced Study in Learning and Teaching) awarded by Imperial College London in 2010 and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).