Professor Ramesh 'Ram' Nataraja

Overview

Ram is a dual-qualified (UK & Australia) General Paediatric Surgeon working at Monash Children’s Hospital in Melbourne Australia. He has interests in Minimally Invasive Surgery, Thoracic, Upper & Lower Gastrointestinal and Oncology Surgery. He believes that all children should have an equal access to the most up-to-date techniques and surgical modalities to ensure that they have the best chance of an excellent recovery. He joined Monash Children's Hospital in 2015 after working as a consultant at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and The Royal London Hospital in London, United Kingdom.

He is a Professor of Simulation-based Education in the Department of Paediatrics at Monash University and coordinates paediatric simulation-based educational activities at MCH in his role as the Director of Monash Children’s Simulation. These include national simulation-based courses, international large projects for both surgical and medical outcomes. He is also both the postgraduate and undergraduate lead for paediatric surgery at Monash Health and Monash University. 

He has been a pioneer in both minimally invasive surgery in children and surgical simulation for many years having designed the first validated paediatric surgical bench trainer model in 2002 at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.

He has an educational and clinical research background with 135 peer reviewed publications, 110 international conference presentations, 3 textbooks published by Wiley-Blackwell and 13 book chapters. He has been awarded multiple awards including most recently in 2024 the Dean of the Faculty of Faculty of Medicine Nursing & Health Sciences award from Excellence in Research Enterprise. He was awarded in 2020 the Dean of the Faculty of Faculty of Medicine Nursing & Health Sciences award from Excellence in Education and then the prestigious Monash University Vice Chancellors Award for Excellence Innovations in Learning and Teaching. He has been awarded a senior fellowship to the Higher Education Academy an international organisation in recognition of his educational practice. My research has also been awarded multiple awards including most cited article, most downloaded article, and article of interest. The Myanmar SBE programme was awarded the Project Innovation Award by Simulation Australia in 2022.

He is also passionate about educational reform in Low- and Middle-Income countries and co-ordinated multiple educational projects over the last 10 years in Myanmar, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Bhutan, Cambodia and Vietnam. This work also has led to his appointment as Consultant in Surgical Education to the World Health Organisation Western Pacific Office between 2021 and 2024. He is also part of the steering committee for the Global Health Section at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons and collaborates with multiple other organisations.