Image of Professor Tim Cook (left) and Matthew Brown (right)
Professor Tim Cook (left) and Matthew Brown (right)

Jesuans awarded Queen’s Birthday Honours

Two Jesus alumni have been recognised in the recent Queen’s Birthday Honours for their work and contributions to the COVID-19 response. We congratulate them on their honours and wish them good luck in their endeavours.

The Queen's Birthday Honours mark the extraordinary contributions and service of people across the United Kingdom.

Professor Tim Cook (1981)

was awarded an OBE for services to anaesthesia during COVID-19. He is a Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine at Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Trust, and Honorary Professor of Anaesthesia at the University of Bristol.  Academically, over the last 15 years, Professor Cook has been centrally involved in leading and guiding five Royal College of Anaesthetists (RCoA) National Audit Projects learning from major complications of anaesthesia. These large projects involve the nation’s anaesthetists collaborating to shine a light on patient-centred aspects of anaesthetic practice and safety. They are a form of professional-citizen science and are recognised to have changed the landscape of UK anaesthesia clinical practice and anaesthesia research engagement.

Professor Cook became aware of the pandemic risk of COVID-19 early in January 2020 and spent time in the following few months highlighting the risk and raising the alarm to colleagues locally and nationally. He worked with the RCoA and the Association of Anaesthetists to ensure early preparedness and then to develop and disseminate guidance as more was learnt about the disease. He has subsequently been engaged in research focused on healthcare worker safety, patient survival from COVID-19 in critical care and exploring the extent to which the disease is airborne.

Mr Matthew Brown (1993)

was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the COVID-19 Response. After studying Natural Sciences and then Management Studies at Jesus College, Matthew worked for 12 years at Accenture across a wide range of industries. In the latter part of his career at Accenture he worked on the NHS’s National Programme for IT, and subsequently left the company to join NHS Digital 2009 to focus solely on Healthcare IT. As a Lead Technical Architect he worked on many national IT systems that underpin the NHS and support patients being far more engaged with their health through digital channels, including the NHS App and NHS login. In 2017 he obtained an MSc with Distinction in Health Informatics from the University of Leeds.

During the last 15 months he has been the NHS Digital Technical Lead for the National COVID-19 Testing Programme – providing the IT that delivers COVID testing for citizens across the whole of the UK and more recently for the NHS COVID-19 status service.