In 2006, Dr Upasana Tayal graduated in medicine with merit from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. This was followed by Academic Foundation clinical training in Oxford and during this time, she completed a short period of research in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging with Prof Stefan Neubauer’s group - looking at changes in the body’s main blood vessel (the aorta) in obese patients before and after weight loss. Following this, she moved to London to undertake her core medical training across Royal Brompton, Harefield and Hammersmith Hospitals. In 2010 she was appointed as a cardiology registrar in London.
Before taking up her SpR post, Upasana volunteered as an Expedition Doctor for the youth development charity Raleigh International in Borneo, as well as working and travelling across New Zealand, Sweden, India, Argentina and the Himalayas. Upasana is an active member of the Trainees’ Committee of the Royal Society of Medicine and organises an annual meeting on Expedition and Humanitarian Medicine at the RSM, designed to showcase the potential opportunities a medical degree offers around the world.
In 2014, Upasana was awarded an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to undertake her current PhD in the cardiac imaging and genetics of dilated cardiomyopathy in the NIHR cardiovascular biomedical research unit based at the Royal Brompton Hospital and Imperial College London, under the supervision of Dr Sanjay Prasad and Prof Stuart Cook. Her research interests include CMR, cardiac genetics, and heart muscle disease.