Professor Avan Aihie Sayer BSc, MBBS, MSc, PhD, FRCP

Professor of Geriatric Medicine

Professor Avan Aihie Sayer is Professor of Geriatric Medicine within Medicine at the University of Southampton.

Avan Aihie Sayer is Professor of Geriatric Medicine and a Principal Investigator at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit at the University of Southampton. She leads an MRC funded research programme on sarcopenia, frailty and clinical practice in older people. The goal is improving the health and healthcare of older people through translation of high quality research into improved clinical practice, innovative service development and relevant evidence for policy.

Her key research contributions have been i) discovery of early life influences on human ageing ii) development of a lifecourse approach to understanding loss of muscle strength, sarcopenia and frailty combining clinical, epidemiological and muscle biology approaches and iii) leadership of observational and intervention studies of older people from across the health spectrum in hospital and community settings.

Her group includes researchers from clinical medicine, epidemiology, statistics and social science together with a flourishing NIHR funded academic geriatric medicine training programme. She is a member of the Healthy Ageing across the Life Course (HALCyon) network which enables collaborative epidemiological research across the major UK ageing cohorts. She has developed a number of national and international collaborations in muscle biology and was recently Raine Visiting Professor at the University of Western Australia.

Professor Sayer is Co-Chair of the University of Southampton Strategic Research Group on Ageing, Secretary to the UK Association of Academic Geriatric Medicine and member of the Academic Board of the European Union Geriatric Medicine Society. She is an Associate Editor at Age and Ageing and a member of several other editorial boards. She has served on a number of UK and European committees and expert panels.

Qualifications

BSc, Pharmacology (First Class), London University 1984

MBBS, Medicine and Surgery, London University 1987

MRCP, Royal College of Physicians, London 1990

MSc, Epidemiology, London University 1993

PhD, Epidemiology, University of Southampton 1997

FRCP, Royal College of Physicians, London 2002

 

Appointments held

• MRC Clinical Scientist MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit University of Southampton 2000 - to date
• Honorary Consultant in Geriatric Medicine, University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust 2000 - to date
• Consultant in Geriatric Medicine, Southampton Community NHS Trust 1998 – 1999
• Senior Registrar in Geriatric Medicine, Wessex Rotation 1996 – 1998
• Wellcome Clinical Research Fellow, MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton 1992 – 1996
• Medical Registrar, Guy’s Rotation, London 1990 – 1999