I studied medicine at the University of Southampton and joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a medical cadet as had an interest in trauma surgery. 

Work placements in America at the Washington Hospital Centre with the MedSTAR trauma team (2007) and Trauma Services at The Royal London Hospital (2009), reinforced my interests in this area of medicine. 

After completing Officer training I joined the Academic Department of Military Surgery and Trauma (ADMST) to investigate a new signature injury affecting the military population from the devastating damage caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the war in Afghanistan. 

This extensive work, completed alongside core surgical training, contributed to evidence based clinical guidelines and created the pelvic and perineal trauma didactic module used on the Military Operational Surgical Training (MOST) course at the Royal College of Surgeons of England (1st Prize - Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow). 

I felt that current assessment and categorisation of military trauma patients, by way of the various injury severity scores, could be greatly improved, therefore I continued to research this topic. The culmination of which led to prestigious awards of Silver in the Young Investigator Plenary Prize Presentation session at the Military Health Systems Research Symposium (MHSRS, Florida 2014) and 1st Prize at the Emergency Medicine section of the Royal Society of Medicine for continued work in developing a novel scoring system using Bayesian methodology. 

My PhD interests are developing Bayesian methodologies further by way of introducing a timeline element to Bayesian Networks (BNs) for military mortality governance as well as implementing BN decision support tools that predict Trauma Induced Coagulopathy into the Emergency Department.  

I was awarded full funding by the Defence Medical Services to carry out research in this field and plan to continue my surgical training after my PhD. 

When I’m not working, I enjoy volleyball, a sport that I have played for many years and have competed at high levels nationally (England Universities, various National League teams including the Super 8 League, where we came 4th in the Country), and now prefer to play at a less competitive level! I’ve also been very fortunate to combine my medical qualification with the sport, working for England Volleyball as a doctor at sporting events, the highlight of which was working as the field of play recovery team leader at the 2012 Olympic Beach and Indoor volleyball games. I also like running, swimming and spending time with family and friends. 

Contact: Somayyeh.mossadegh@doctors.org.uk