Dr Noor ul Owase Jeelani BMed.Sci (Hons), BMBS, MRCS, MBA, MPhil (Medical Law), FRCS (NeuroSurg.) is a Kashmiri-British neurosurgeon and academic. He is a Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children (GOSH) and was the Head of the Department of Neurosurgery from 2012 until 2018.[1] He is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Child Health, University College London.[2] He leads the FaceValue research group in Craniofacial Morphometrics, device design, and clinical outcomes.[3]
Dr Owase Jeelani is known for his work separating craniopagus twins in 2011,[4] 2019,[5] 2020[6] 2021[7] and 2022.[8] In 2019, he founded the charity Gemini Untwined.[9]
Dr Jeelani obtained his Medical Degree in 1997 from the University of Nottingham.[1] His basic surgical training took place in Nottingham and Southampton, and his Neurosurgical and Craniofacial training took place in the UK and Canada.[1] He undertook fellowships in Paediatric Neurosurgery and Craniofacial Surgery at GOSH and at Sick Kids, Toronto. He also holds a master's degree in medical law from the University of Glasgow and an MBA from INSEAD.[1]
In 2012 Dr Jeelani was appointed as the Lead Clinician for the Department of Neurosurgery at Great Ormond Street Hospital.[1] Dr Jeelani was named in ‘The Times’ top 100 surgeons in the UK in 2011[10] and the top 100 children's doctors in 2012.[11]
He led the successful separation of five sets of conjoined twins: Rital and Ritag in 2011,[4] Safa and Marwa in 2019,[12] Yigit and Derman in 2020[6] and two Israeli twins in 2021.[13] In 2022 Dr Jeelani was part of a UK and Brazilian team that separated Bernardo and Arthur Lima, two Brazilian twins, in a 33 hour operation.[14] These procedures were covered extensively by international media outlets.[15] [16] [17]
Since 2012 he has been the co-director of FaceValue, a research programme based at University College London (UCL) that specialises in designing machine learning algorithms to improve surgical outcomes.[18] In 2007, Dr Jeelani invented CranioXpand, a spring distractor technology for minimally invasive Craniofacial surgery.[19] The IP was obtained by KLS Martin, a medical devices company.[20]
Dr Jeelani undertakes healthcare advisory work for the NHS and other private organisations.[21] In 2003 he founded a strategy consulting company, Interface Health Solutions.
In 2019, he co-founded Gemini Untwined, a global charity dedicated to supporting the research and treatment for CPT twins.[22]