Professor Laura Viani, President RCSI and Consultant Otolaryngologist and Neuro-Otologist at Beaumont Hospital and Temple Street University Children's Hospital, has been made an Honorary Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Professor Viani pursued her otolaryngology training in Dublin, Manchester and Liverpool and was appointed as consultant to Beaumont Hospital in 1993.

Recognising the absence of a service for profoundly deaf children and adults in Ireland, Professor Viani undertook Fellowships in skull base surgery in Cambridge, UK and in neuro-otology in Zurich, Switzerland, before returning to Ireland in 1995 to perform Ireland’s first cochlear implant. Since then, and along with her colleagues, Professor Viani has carried out over 2,000 cochlear implants in profoundly deaf children and adults.

Hands-on training

She established the Republic of Ireland’s first and only cochlear implant programme in 1995, which has grown to become the National Hearing Implant and Viani Research Centre. It has secured an annual ring-fenced budget of €6.8 million and has raised an administrative budget of over €90m since inception. The centre has a multidisciplinary team of over 30 professionals, caring for children and adults with severe to profound hearing loss from all over Ireland.

She has also established a number of research collaborations with Vanderbilt University in the US and has supervised many PhD and MSc theses for students of TCD and RCSI.

Professor Viani recognised the need for hands-on training, not just for Fellows and Specialist Registrars, but all training and service grades rotating through her unit. She is a member of the Court of Examiners of RCSI and was convener of Otolaryngology Section at the Charter Day meetings for over 15 years.

She has been a Council Member of RCSI since 2000 and is past president of the otolaryngology section of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Ireland and past president of the Student Surgical Society in RCSI. She is also an Honorary Associate Professor of Surgery in RCSI and an Honorary Adjunct Professor in the School of Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. She has been a visiting Professor in the Cochlear Institutes of Sydney, Melbourne and Bahrain and she has been advisor on cochlear implantation to training centres worldwide.

An outstanding example

Professor Viani’s commitment to research, teaching and service is recognised through the numerous awards including the RAMI Registrar Prize (1986), Research Fellowship of the RCSI (1986), Augustine Mehigan Scholarship (1992), TWJ Scholarship (1993), Angel James Prize London (2000), the Graves Lecturer (2012), The Philip Stell Award (2019) and Outstanding Teaching Award from Bahrain and Middle East Otolaryngology (2019).

She was awarded the inaugural CPL Global World Class Talent Award (2019) and presented The Joseph Toynbee Lecture at the Royal Society of Medicine London (2021).

Mr Kieran Ryan, Managing Director for Surgical Affairs, at RCSI, said: "Professor Viani has singularly transformed the lives of thousands of profoundly deaf children and adults. She provides an outstanding example to surgical trainees and medical students of excellence in patient-centred care. We are proud that she has been awarded the highest recognition by the American College of Surgeons, an award that is richly deserved.”