International Women's Day 2022: Vijay Kunadian reflects on her journey from trainee to Professor of Interventional Cardiology

#InternationalWomensDay #IWD2022 #BreaktheBias

Reflecting on the journey so far…

Vijay Kunadian’s interest in interventional cardiology started when she undertook her Doctorate research degree at Newcastle University when her research project involved in depth analysis of hundreds of coronary angiographic images. After completing her Doctorate with Commendation, she decided to pursue interventional cardiology clinical training in the North East of England. At the time there were no other female interventional trainees or consultants…

Her academic fellowship in Boston MA ignited her passion for academia. After completing interventional training, she accepted a two year academic position at Newcastle University (which subsequently became tenured). University positions require securing major competitive research grant awards. Professor Kunadian took upon herself this challenge and submitted numerous grant applications to major UK funders in addition to her very busy clinical and teaching responsibilities. She now has the opportunity to lead on many clinical research studies. She has been very fortunate to work with great mentors, leaders, colleagues, and collaborators from very early stages of her career. Along the way there were indeed many obstacles, barriers, rejections, biases and challenges but she always focussed on the opportunities the obstacles and challenges brought...

She hopes that this will encourage many more young women who wish to pursue a career in cardiology, intervention, academia and that there will be many more women who will follow in the future!