March's reviewers of the month

Like most journals, BJUI relies on the hard work and dedication of its peer reviewers and we are grateful to them all. Each month the Editorial Team nominates peer reviewers whose reviews have stood out for their quality and timeliness and those selected as the best are highlighted on this page in recognition of their exceptional work.

Dr Hemal has done pioneering work in the field of laparoscopic urology venturing in the field since 1992 and has been associated with initial development of robotic urologic surgery since 2001 developing several techniques. His unique contribution has been in training of Fellows, residents, urologists (worldwide) in addition performing live demonstration of endourological, laparoscopic and Robotic Urologic Surgical procedures in over 350 scientific conferences all across the world for educational purposes and disseminating the knowledge, Proctoring, Mentoring and Preceptorship in Laparoscopic, Endourology and Robotic Urologic Surgery during entire career spanning over 35 years. He helped developing robotic program and Team at several centres all across the world since 2001. Dr Hemal has seven books and over 450 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and another 200 papers and book chapters to his credit. He has been the recipient of many academic distinctions and awards to name a few prestigious BC Roy Award, UGC Hari Om Ashram award and “Padma-Shree” by the president of India. He is also recipient of several other prestigious award such as Urologist of the Decade award, Guest Scholar of the American College of Surgeons, SIU- scholar, Fulbright scholar, and Health Hero award given by Business Journal of USA. He has also received Sushruta award by Indian, American Urology association. He has been nominated as Best Doctor of America, Top Doctor of America and Top Prostate Cancer doctor since 2008 every year till the date. He was also featured as Top Prostate Cancer doctor of USA in New York Times, USA.

Dr Usher-Smith is a GP and Associate Professor of General Practice at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interest focuses on optimising the implementation of risk-stratified medicine to promote prevention and early detection of cancer and cardiovascular disease. This includes quantitative and qualitative research covering the development and validation of risk models, evaluation of the societal, psychological, behavioural and system-level aspects associated with implementation, and conducting feasibility and pilot studies within clinical practice. Alongside research on breast cancer risk assessment and risk-stratified bowel cancer screening, she co-led the Yorkshire Kidney Screening Trial, the first study to assess the feasibility of incorporating an additional abdominal CT-scan within risk-based lung cancer screening programmes, and is currently leading a feasibility study of incorporating a newly developed PREDICT Kidney risk communication tool into clinical care for patients who have undergone surgery for newly diagnosed localised kidney cancer.

Malte W. Vetterlein, MD, FEBU, is an Assistant Professor of Urology at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), Germany, where he leads the Urology Research Unit. He serves as chairman of the Trauma and Reconstructive Urology Working Party of the European Association of Urology (EAU) Young Academic Urologists (YAU), is a board member of the EAU Section of Genitourinary Reconstructive Surgeons (ESGURS), and is on the faculty of the European School of Urology (ESU). Dr Vetterlein specialises in urethral reconstruction and gender-affirming surgery for transgender women. His research focuses on urethral reconstruction techniques and improving complication reporting in urological surgery. He has authored over 150 peer-reviewed articles and several book chapters. Dr Vetterlein earned his medical degree from the University of Würzburg, Germany, and completed his urology residency at UKE. He pursued research fellowships with Dr Quoc-Dien Trinh at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and with Dr Mani Menon and Dr Firas Abdollah at the Vattikuti Urology Institute, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI.