Samer Nashef qualified as a doctor at the University of Bristol in 1980. He is a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, and a world-leading expert on risk and quality in surgical care. He is the creator of EuroSCORE, which calculates the predicted risk of death from heart operations and is the most successful risk model in medicine, used worldwide and credited with saving tens of thousands of lives. The author of more than 200 publications, his research has been widely cited and he has been invited to lecture in more than 30 countries. As clinical tutor at the University of Cambridge, he is also a dedicated teacher and public communicator, having appeared in NHS Direct videos, at the Wellcome Foundation and in Channel 4's 'The Operation'. He is also a regular compiler of cryptic crosswords for The Guardian and Financial Times under a pseudonym.