Dr Daniel Martin is the Director of the UCL Centre for Altitude, Space and Extreme Environment (CASE) Medicine, which is based at the ISEH. Alongside this he is a Senior Lecturer at UCL and Honorary Consultant in Perioperative and Critical Care Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital. He is also an Honorary Lecturer at the Eramus MC-Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam.
Daniel graduated from the University of Leicester in 1997 and moved to London in 2000 when he began training in anaesthesia and critical care medicine in the Central London School of Anaesthesia. He was appointed as a substantive Consultant and Senior Lecturer in 2011 and completed his PhD in applied physiology at UCL in 2013.
Daniel is also a Director on the Executive Board of Xtreme Everest, an international collaboration of researchers focused on improving outcomes in critically ill patients. Currently one in five of the population will end up in an intensive care unit (ICU); approximately a third of those admitted will sadly die. These patients frequently lack oxygen due to lung and heart failure, therefore understanding more about how the human body adapts to and copes with a shortage of oxygen may improve their survival. By traveling to places high altitude, the Xtreme Everest team have been able to exploit the thin air found their and conduct experiments to explore human physiology. The results from high altitude are now being used to drive a programme of research at sea level, in critically ill patients. This work could have a profound impact on many patients with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart and lung disease, cystic fibrosis and congenital heart disease. As part of CASE Medicine and Xtreme Everest, Daniel was a researcher on the Baruntse 2003 expedition, one of the deputy research leaders for the Cho Oyu 2006 expedition and Caudwell Xtreme Everest expedition in 2007. He was also the leader of the Xtreme Alps 2010 research expedition to the Margherita Hut laboratory and leader of Xtreme Everest 2 in 2013.
Daniel along with Dr Kevin Fong runs the UCL undergraduate BSc Space Medicine and Extreme Environment Physiology module. This popular course that many CASE Medicine and Xtreme Everest members teach on has been running for 15 years and remains one of the most popular and over subscribed courses in the Physiology department.
Dr Martin’s research clinical research interests lie within perioperative and critical care medicine. He is currently involved in studies looking at the use of cardiopulmonary exercise testing perioperatively, optimisation of patients post liver transplant surgery. By bringing the CASE Medicine team to the ISEH, Daniel has been able to bring a wealth of research knowledge (from conception to implementation of research) as well as opening up new research opportunities for the institute. Part of his work has seen the creation of the ISEH Research Meetings, whose role is to formally review both research taking place at the Institute as well as ensuring the smooth running of the Laboratory, including the training/use of the ISEH hypoxic chamber.
Daniel has also become a celebrity at the ISEH with a recent turn on the BBC for Michael Moseley’s “The Wonderful World of Blood” documentary where he invited Dr Mosley to visit the hypoxic chamber for four hours, taking him to a “height” of 4,500 meters which is around 12% oxygen. The ISEH’s hypoxic chamber allows researchers to recreate these environments at sea level and has proved invaluable not only for the ongoing Xtreme Everest research but for other researchers wishing to create this environment for their studies. As Dr Mosley says in the documentary “I just have to cross the room” within the ISEH Laboratory and he can be at the summit of Mont Blanc. Daniel has been involved with the making of a number of radio and television documentaries over the years and was recently described by the BBC as one of “five daredevils who helped science” over the years. In 2013 he was featured in the Times top 100 people to watch, in the science section.
In his spare time Daniel provides acute medical care for major sporting events with and has a particular interest in the treatment of exertional heatstroke in athletes. Daniel is a Fellow of the Royal Geographic society and has summited Denali (6,194m), Cho Oyu (8201m), and Everest (8848m).
Read our recent web chat with Dr Martin on Xtreme Everest.