Virtual proCardio 2020

Hutter Family Professor of Medicine
Massachusetts General Hospital
Harvard Medical School

Professor James L. Januzzi, MD, is the Hutter Family Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and has been a cardiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA since 2000. He is also a Senior Cardiometabolic Faculty member at Baim Institute for Clinical Research. After completing his undergraduate studies at Holy Cross College in 1988, Professor Januzzi graduated first in his class at New York Medical College in 1994, and subsequently performed a residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and fellowship in Cardiology and Cardiac Ultrasound at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Professor Januzzi is a world-leading expert in the field of biomarker testing in heart disease. He has participated in steering committees, endpoint committees or data safety monitoring boards for numerous clinical trials of heart failure therapies, anticoagulants, and diabetes care drugs. He has co-authored more than 600 publications within these areas and edited two textbooks on cardiac biomarker testing. He has been cited nearly 67 000 times and has an H-index of 106. He is an Associate Editor for both Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Journal of the American College of Cardiology: Heart Failure. He is a Trustee of the American College of Cardiology and has been the Cardiologist for the Boston Red Sox Baseball Club since 2005.

Assistant Professor of Cardiology
Heidelberg University Hospital

Professor Evangelos Giannitsis has been a physician at the Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany since 2002, specializing in MRI from 2004. After gaining his medical degree from the University of Hamburg Medical School, Professor Giannitsis completed postgraduate training in internal medicine and cardiology at Lübeck University Hospital, Germany. Subsequently, he undertook a PhD in internal medicine before assuming his current position.

His research focuses on cardiac imaging and the validation and application of cardiac biomarkers in diagnosing coronary syndromes, and he has been the Principal Investigator for many clinical trials in these fields. He is a member of a number of professional societies including the European Society of Cardiology and the German Society for Cardiology where he sits on the guideline committee for the management of acute coronary syndromes. Professor Giannitsis is a member of the editorial board of the European Heart Journal: Cardiovascular Pharmacology and is a Guest Editor of Diagnosis, and he has published over 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals as well as 20 book chapters.

Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine 
Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine
Université de Paris
Hospital Saint-Louis & Lariboisière 

Professor Alexandre Mebazaa is a Professor of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the Hôpital Lariboisière, Paris, France, and has held the position since 2000. After qualifying from Louis Pasteur University, Strasbourg, France, he obtained his doctorate investigating the effect of endothelial cells on the calcium responsiveness of the cardiac myofilament from the Lariboisière School of Medicine. In 2012, he became Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at Hospitals Saint-Louis & Lariboisière, which comprises 57 ICU beds and 40 anesthesia rooms. He also acted as member or chair of several Steering Committees, e.g., SURVIVE, COMPOSE, TRUE-HF and STRONG-HF.

Professor Mebazaa’s research interests include mechanisms of contractile impairment during acute heart failure and biomarkers in acute heart failure. He has authored and co-authored over 300 research articles published in prestigious intensive care and cardiology journals such as Intensive Care Medicine, European Heart Journal and Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Professor of Cardiology, 
Imperial College London

Professor Martin Cowie, MD, MSc, FRCP, FRCP (Ed), FESC, FHFA, FACC is Professor of Cardiology and Chair of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London. He is an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, where he leads the heart failure service, and a Non-Executive Director of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Professor Cowie's research interests focus on health technology assessment and delivery of efficient and effective care for patients with heart failure, with a particular focus on diagnostics, drugs, or devices. He has had a longstanding interest in evaluating remote monitoring and now digital technologies in heart failure. 

Professor Cowie is a founding member and past-Chairman of the British Society for Heart Failure, in addition to being a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). He chairs the Digital Health Committee of the ESC, and was responsible for organizing the first European Society of Cardiology Digital Summit in October 2019 in Tallinn. Professor Cowie was shortlisted for the NHS Digital Champion (Leadership) Award in England in 2017, was awarded the Thomas Lewis Medal for services to British Cardiology in 2019, and was the recipient of the Roy Award from the UK Heart Failure Patient Charity, Pumping Marvellous in 2019 for outstanding contribution to excellence in heart failure.

Professor Cowie is an Associate Editor of Heart and Journal of the American College of Cardiology- Heart Failure, and is an editorial board member of many other journals. He has contributed chapters to many books, and has written a book for patients entitled “Living with Heart Failure – A Guide for Patients”. He has published over 300 Pub-Med listed papers, has been cited more than 68 000 times and has a current h-index of 76. 

He particularly enjoys speaking to members of the public about cardiovascular health issues, and has spoken at the Cambridge Science Festival, The Wellcome Foundation, The Dana Foundation, and most recently delivered a TEDx talk on “Beating the World’s Biggest Killer”.

Professor of Heart Diseases
Department of Clinical Sciences
Karolinska Institutet
Danderyd University Hospital

Professor Mårten Rosenqvist is Professor emeritus of Heart Diseases and Senior Consultant at the Department of Clinical Sciences, Karolinska Institutet, Danderyd University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. From 1990 to 1997, Professor Rosenqvist served as a press officer for the European Society of Cardiology. Additionally, he has been the Physician in ordinary to the King of Sweden since 1996. 

Professor Rosenqvist is highly regarded for his research focusing on atrial fibrillation, ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. He has been a co-author on more than 200 research articles published in a number of esteemed peer-reviewed journals including Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, New England Journal of Medicine and European Heart Journal.

Emergency Physician
Royal Adelaide Hospital

Dr Cynthia Papendick is an Emergency Physician at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, Australia. Dr Papendick has been involved in the development of pathways for patients presenting to the emergency department with suspected acute coronary syndrome (ACS) across South Australia since 2012. Recently she was the senior author and a key investigator in RAPID-TnT trial, the first in-practice patient-level randomized multi-center study that evaluated the non-inferiority of the European Society of Cardiology 0/1-hour high-sensitivity troponin T protocol compared with a 0/3-hour masked high-sensitivity troponin T protocol in suspected ACS patients presenting to the emergency department (RAPID-TnT). 

She is the clinical lead for the implementation of high sensitivity troponin within the Central Adelaide Health Network and is the primary investigator of an upcoming pre and post implementation study examining the safety and resource utilization of the transition to high sensitivity reporting (RAPID-PACE).   

Professor of Medicine and Consultant Cardiologist
Christchurch Heart Institute 
University of Otago

Professor Richard Troughton holds an academic post at the University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand and is actively involved in ongoing cardiovascular research and teaching. He is a consultant cardiologist at Christchurch Heart Institute and Clinical Co-Director at the Christchurch Heart Group, a University of Otago Research Centre. Previously, he completed his PhD with the Christchurch Cardioendocrine Research Group - now called the Christchurch Heart Institute. From 2001 to 2003, he completed post-graduate fellowships in Advanced Cardiac Imaging and in Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation

Professor Troughton’s research interests include neurohormonal control of cardiovascular and renal function, use of diagnostic biomarkers, echocardiography, and novel treatments and monitoring of heart failure. He has co-authored several book chapters as well as an extensive number of articles published in journals such as European Journal of Heart Failure, Journal of American College of Cardiology and Heart.

Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania

Professor Bonnie Ky is a tenured Associate Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and physician scientist at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, PA, as well as the Founding Director of the Penn Cardio-Oncology Center of Excellence. She is a practising cardiologist and the Director of the Penn Center for Quantitative Echocardiography at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  

The goals of her research program are to gain insight into the underlying mechanisms and predictors of cancer therapy cardiotoxicity and heart failure, and to translate this understanding to the clinical care of patients. She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation, Sarnoff Research Foundation Scientific Committee, NIH Scientific Review Group and numerous societies within the FDA, American Society of Clinical Oncology, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and European Society of Cardiology. Professor Ky is also the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of JACC: CardioOncology. In addition, she has co-authored over 140 publications and serves on the Editorial Board of Circulation, Circulation Heart Failure and Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Senior Professor of Cardiology
Uppsala University Hospital

Professor Lars Wallentin became the first Professor of Cardiology at Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden in 1991, and was head of the coronary care unit from 1991 to 1999. In 1992, he started the Swedish Registry of Acute Cardiac Care, which developed into a model for web-based research and development in the Swedish healthcare system in the early 2000s. Professor Wallentin founded the Uppsala Clinical Research Center in 2001, and was its first Director until 2008. Since the mid-1980s, Professor Wallentin’s research group has been devoted to acute coronary artery disease, having developed many new concepts concerning pathogenesis, diagnosis, risk stratification, and antithrombotic and interventional treatments. 

Professor Wallentin has been a co-author on more than 700 research articles. He has served as both President of the Swedish Cardiac Society from 1998 to 1991, and President of the Swedish Heart foundation from 2000 to 2002. He also currently co-chairs the European Society of Cardiology Euroheart Registry Project. Among his accolades, he has been awarded the prestigious European Society of Cardiology’s Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to cardiac research, and in 2012, was made an honorary citizen of Uppsala in recognition of his services to the field of cardiology. 

Interventional Cardiologist and Senior Physician
Cardiovascular Research Institute Basel
University Hospital Basel

Dr Raphael Twerenbold, MD, FESC is an interventional cardiologist and Senior Physician at the Cardiology Clinic of the University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland. After studying medicine at the University of Basel, Dr Twerenbold trained as an internist and cardiologist both in Switzerland and Germany. His primary professional interests are the interventional treatment of coronary and valvular heart disease. In addition to his clinical work, Dr Twerenbold has a keen interest in the optimal use of various cardiovascular biomarkers in clinical practice.

Dr Twerenbold has co-authored numerous research articles published in prestigious journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and European Heart Journal. He has received multiple research awards for his scientific activities, most prominently for the development and validation of multiple 0/1-hour rule-in and rule-out algorithms using high-sensitivity cardiac troponin, on which the latest European Society of Cardiology guidelines on the management of non-ST-segment-elevation acute coronary syndromes are based. 

Professor of Clinical Coagulation Science
Department of Medical Sciences, Coagulation and Inflammation Science
Uppsala University

Professor Agneta Siegbahn has held the position of Professor of Clinical Coagulation Science at Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden since 2000. She completed both her MD in 1974 and PhD in 1985 at Uppsala University, and has had clinical residencies and fellowships in internal medicine, hematology and clinical chemistry. Professor Siegbahn founded the Coagulation Unit at the University Hospital in 1987. Her primary research interests include clinical and translational studies of coagulation and thrombosis, in particular the interplay between coagulation and inflammation in cardiovascular diseases and atrial fibrillation, of which she is an internationally recognized leader. She is the principal investigator of the research project “Biomarker Profiles in Cardiovascular Diseases - The ABC-risk score project” funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. She established the Uppsala Clinical Research Centre Laboratory in 2007 and the Clinical Biomarkers Facility at Science for Life Laboratory in Uppsala, Sweden in 2012.

Over the past 30 years, Professor Siegbahn has held a large number of academic leadership positions, such as board member at Uppsala University and the Swedish Research Council of Medicine. She is member of the Royal Society of Sciences, Uppsala and the European Society of Cardiology Working Group on Thrombosis. Professor Siegbahn has published in excess of 300 original research articles, reviews and book chapters, and has received a number of prestigious awards including the Olof Rudbeck Gold Medal for excellent scientific research. 

Internal Medicine Resident
Allergy and Clinical Immunology Fellow
University Medical Center

Dr Rick Pleijhuis is a specialist in internal medicine and, since 2018, he has been an Allergy and Clinical Immunology Fellow at the University Medical Center, Groningen, The Netherlands. Dr Pleijhuis completed his PhD regarding near-infrared fluorescence imaging in breast cancer patients in 2014 at the University of Groningen. He has a special interest in clinical prediction rules and decision support systems to aid patient-tailored and evidence-based medicine.

Dr Pleijhuis is active in the field of medical innovation and is an initiator/co-founder of various digital medical solutions including Evidencio (medical decision support), DiagnOSAS (screening tool for sleep apnea), and TIM Solutions (workflow management). He has co-authored a number of articles in medical peer-reviewed journals including Nature Medicine, Scientific Reports, and Journal of Nuclear Imaging.

Professor of Medicine and Director of the Division of Perioperative Care
McMaster University

Professor PJ Devereaux is a Cardiologist at Hamilton Health Services, ON, Canada, and has a PhD in clinical epidemiology. He is the Director of the Division of Perioperative Care at McMaster University. He is also the Scientific Leader of the Anesthesiology, Perioperative Medicine, and Surgical Research Group at the Population Health Research Institute. Professor Devereaux is a full Professor at McMaster University and a Senior Scientist at the Population Health Research Institute of Canada. He is supported by a Tier-1 Canadian Research Chair in Perioperative Medicine and the McMaster University / Hamilton Health Sciences Chair in Perioperative Care.

Professor Devereaux’s research primarily focuses on vascular complications around the time of surgery. He has published more than 330 peer reviewed papers and over 80 book chapters, editorials, and commentaries. He has given >900 lectures and research presentations in 40 countries

Professor and Senior Consultant
National Heart Centre
Duke-NUS Medical School

Professor Carolyn Lam, MBBS, PhD, MRCP, MS, FACC, FAMS, FESC, is a Senior Consultant of the National Heart Centre, Singapore, Singapore and a Professor of the Duke-NUS Cardiovascular Academic Clinical Program at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. She graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, National University of Singapore, completed advanced specialty training in Cardiology in Singapore, and pursued her Research Fellowship at the Cardiorenal Laboratory, Heart Failure Fellowship at the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, and Advanced Cardiology and Master of Biomedical Sciences at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, U.S.A. She further obtained training in clinical and genetic epidemiology at the Framingham Heart Study in Boston, MA before returning to Singapore in 2010 on the National Medical Research Council’s Clinician Scientist Award.

Professor Lam is globally recognized for her research within heart failure and preserved ejection fraction. She also has significant expertise within women’s cardiovascular disease, hemodynamics, echocardiography, biomarkers, and clinical trials. She started the first Women’s Heart Health Clinic and Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction Programme in Singapore and has served as a member of the Executive Committees of several global heart failure trials. Professor Lam has been a co-author on numerous research articles and is an Associate Editor for Circulation and European Journal of Heart Failure.

Assistant Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School 
Massachusetts General Hospital

Dr Nasrien E. Ibrahim, MD, FACC, FAHA, FHFSA is an Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiologist and the Associated Director of the Resynchronization and Advanced Cardiac Therapeutics program at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. She completed her internal medicine residency and general cardiology fellowship at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center in Cincinnati, OH. Next, she completed a fellowship in advanced heart failure and cardiac transplant at the University of Colorado in Denver, CO, and finally, a fellowship in cardiovascular clinical research at the Massachusetts General Hospital. 

Dr Ibrahim is involved in several research studies in heart failure involving biomarkers and participates in several clinical trials all aimed at improving the management and outcomes of patients with heart failure. She has research interests in biomarkers, implementation of guideline-directed medical therapies, access to care, and health equity. She has authored numerous articles published in esteemed journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of American College of Cardiology and Circulation.