Speaker

Mr. Yacoub Khalaf, MD, FRCOG, is a Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Guy’s & St. Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London, where he also serves as an active front-line clinician and reproductive surgeon. He is internationally recognized as a strong advocate for evidence-based medicine and patients’ rights. From 2004 to 2019, he served as Director of the Assisted Conception Unit and was the HFEA Person Responsible. Since 2011, he has directed the Pre-implantation Genetic Testing Programme and also leads the International Training Fellowship Programme. Additionally, he is the Deputy Director of the RCOG Subspecialty Training Programme in Reproductive Medicine.

Mr. Khalaf has been a member of the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues, and Organs (SaBTO) since 2001, advising UK ministers and health departments on the safest practices for transfusion and transplantation. He is the incoming President of the International Society for IVF (January 2025–January 2027) and will also serve as President of the Middle East Fertility Society from November 2024 to November 2026. He previously chaired the HFEA Scientific and Clinical Advances Advisory Committee from 2015 to 2021 and was a long-serving member of the RCOG Genomics Taskforce from 2000 to 2023.

He has also served as a member of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) Board from 2014 to 2021 and was an executive board member of the British Fertility Society. Mr. Khalaf chaired the RCOG National Clinical Studies Group in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery and holds visiting professorships at the University of Assiut in Egypt and the University of Zagreb School of Medicine in Croatia. He is a principal investigator on several National Institute of Health Research-funded research grants and has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, BMJ, Nature Cell Biology, and Nature.

He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Frontiers in Endocrinology and is a former Associate Editor of RBM Online Journal. Mr. Khalaf is a frequent invited and plenary speaker at international conferences on fertility and IVF and has served as an expert advisor on the regulation of pre-implantation genetic testing to the Ministries of Health in Singapore and Japan.