Kevin Fong

Kevin Jeremy San Yoong Fong (born 21 May 1971)Ancestry.com. England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916–2005 atabase on-line Provo, Utah, US: Ancestry.com Inc, 2008. Original data: General Register Office. England and Wales Civil Registration Indexes. London, England: General Register Office. is a British doctor and broadcaster. He is a consultant anaesthetist and anaesthetic lead for Major Incident Planning at UCL Hospitals. He is a professor at University College London where he organises and runs an undergraduate course Extreme Environment Physiology. Fong also serves as a prehospital doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex and specialises in space medicine in the UK and is the co-director of the Centre for Aviation Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE Medicine), University College London.

Fong is best known for his television appearances, particularly as an occasional presenter of the long-running BBC2 science programme, ''Horizon''. He presented the 2012 Channel 4 series '' Extreme A&E'' where he visited trauma centres all over the world. In 2015, he presented the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, an annual series of lectures in front of a live audience of schoolchildren, and broadcast on BBC Four, with the subject ''How to Survive in Space''.

Early life

Fong was born in London and educated at St Anselm’s (Roman Catholic) primary school in Harrow on the Hill, followed by Salvatorian College, a Catholic state academy in Wealdstone and Greenhill Tertiary College in Harrow, London. He holds Bachelor's degrees in astrophysics and medicine from University College London and a master's degree in astronautics and space engineering from Cranfield University.

Career

Fong has worked as a Consultant in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine at UCLH, and was co-founder and co-director of the Centre for Aviation, Space and Extreme Environment Medicine (CASE), UCL Medical School. He is Professor of Innovation and Engagement for Science and Medecine in the Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy at University College London and an Honorary Lecturer in Physiology at King's College London.

Fong has also been a longstanding advocate of furthering the UK's involvement in international programmes of human space exploration. In 1999 he organised and hosted an international space biomedical conference at UCL, with senior representatives from ESA, NASA and the British National Space Centre, to discuss strategies for furthering UK involvement in programmes of space biomedical research. He later launched the UK's first undergraduate course in Space Medicine and Extreme Environment Physiology and contributed to several high-level reviews of human space exploration strategy, including the UK Space Exploration Working Group (2007), the UK Space Exploration Review (2008) and the Royal Astronomical Society's Commission on the Scientific Case for Human Space Flight (2007).

His post-graduate medical training includes general medicine, emergency medicine, anaesthesia and intensive care medicine. He holds three postgraduate medical diplomas: Member of the Royal College of Physicians, Fellowship of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and Fellowship of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine.

He was a NESTA Fellow between 2003 and 2008. During this time he took part in a diving expedition for Coral Cay and worked regularly with NASA as a visiting researcher with the Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office at Johnson Space Center and occasionally with the medical group at Kennedy Space Center. It was during one of his visits to NASA that he completed his master's degree in Astronautics (co-supervised by Professor William H. Paloski, Director of NASA’s Space Life and Physical Sciences Research and Applications Division).

In 2011 Fong was awarded The Wellcome Trust's first Public Engagement Fellowship, designed to give the awardees the freedom, resources and environment to enable innovative public engagement projects that examine, explore and debate the big scientific challenges faced by society. This was followed in 2016 by a senior fellowship award from the Wellcome Trust in Innovation and Engagement.

In March 2020, Kevin was seconded to NHS England as National Clinical Advisor in Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response for the COVID-19 incident.

In media

Fong was a guest in '' Material World'', on 20 January 2000, where he argued for British participation in space travel research, particularly focusing on the long-term effects on the human frame. He presented Channel 4's science programme ''Superhumans'' in 2004, an episode of ''Frontiers'' on Radio 4, entitled ''Engineering Flu'', and five episodes of the BBC
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