Faculty
Eugene Braunwald,MD, MD (Hon), ScD (Hon), FRCP
Keynote Speaker
EUGENE BRAUNWALD, M.D. is the Distinguished Hersey Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and the founding Chair of the TIMI Study Group at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Dr. Braunwald trained at New York University School of Medicine and served his Medical Residency at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He served as Chief of Cardiology and as Clinical Director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and founding Chair of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. From 1972 to 1996 he was Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. From 1980 to 1989 he also served as Chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Beth Israel Hospital and Blumgart Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He was a founding trustee and Chief Academic Officer of Partners HealthCare System.
Dr. Braunwald’s first major paper was published in Circulation Research in July 1954, and he has been a major force in cardiology since then. His early work focused on the control and assessment of ventricular function and he was the first to measure both left ventricular ejection fraction and left ventricular dp/dt in patients. His group showed the first neurohumoral defect in human heart failure, defined the pathophysiology of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and demonstrated salvage of ischemic myocardium following coronary occlusion. For the past 32 years, he and his colleagues at the TIMI Study Group demonstrated improved outcome with a patent coronary artery which led to the widely accepted “open artery hypotheses.” They were the first to show the benefit of preventing adverse remodeling of the infarcted ventricle with ACE inhibition. In the PROVE-IT TIMI 22 Trial, they demonstrated the benefit of more intensive reduction of LDL cholesterol in high risk coronary artery patients, which changed practice guidelines and favorably affected the lives of millions.
Dr. Braunwald was an editor of Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine for 12 editions, and the founding editor of Heart Disease, now in its 11th Edition, the most influential textbooks in their fields.
Science Watch listed Dr. Braunwald as the most frequently cited author in Cardiology; he has an h index of 208. He has received numerous honors and awards including the Distinguished Scientist and Lifetime Achievement Awards of the American College of Cardiology, Research Achievement, and Herrick Awards of the American Heart Association, and the Gold Medal of the European Society of Cardiology. He received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Oxford and is the recipient of honorary doctorates from twenty three other distinguished universities on three continents. The American College of Cardiology and the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology have established annual lectures in his name. Harvard University established the Eugene Braunwald endowed Chair in Medicine. Dr. Braunwald was the first adult cardiologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S. The living Nobel Prize winners in medicine voted Dr. Braunwald as “the person who has contributed the most to cardiology in recent years”.
Lynne W. Stevenson,MD
Cardiologist and Lisa Jacobson Professor
of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School
of Medicine; Director, Cardiomyopathy
Program, Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular
Institute; Nashville, TN, USA
Lynne Warner Stevenson has been Director of Cardiomyopathy and Heart Failure Programs at UCLA, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and currently is Director of Cardiomyopathy at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
She has been an active member of AHA, ACC, ISHLT, and HFSA societies and contributed to 30 national guidelines relating to heart failure, transplantation, ventricular assist devices, arrhythmia devices, and decision-making in advanced heart failure.
She has served as a member of the FDA cardio-renal panel and MEDCAC, and as an associate editor for Circulation, Circulation Heart Failure, and currently for JACC. She has played leadership roles in NHLBI-sponsored studies for strategies of medical and device therapies in advanced heart failure, such as ESCAPE, REMATCH, REVIVAL, and the Heart Failure Network Trials, was one of the designers of the INTERMACS and NCDR ICD registries, and collaborates in the CardioThoracic Surgery Network
Her academic work reflects multiple aspects of heart failure physiology, clinical assessment, patient-centered outcomes and shared decision making. She co- chaired the recent ACC pathway document for HF hospitalization and the ACC forum on incorporating patient-reported outcomes into practice. Strong commitments for her are re-defining heart failure with and without congestion, training clinicians to advance the science of personalized care, and seeking clarity in guidelines to encompass patient priorities for quality and length of life.
Milton Packer,MD
Distinguished Scholar in Cardiovascular Science, Baylor University Medical Center;
Dallas, TX, USA
Visiting Professor,
National Heart and Lung Institute;
Imperial College London,
London, UK
Milton Packer MD is currently Distinguished Scholar in Cardiovascular Science at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas. Dr. Packer is an internationally recognized clinical investigator who has made many seminal contributions to the field of heart failure, both in understanding its mechanisms and defining its rational management. His work has spanned more than 40 years and has been strongly supported by numerous investigator-initiated grants from the National Institutes of Health and from industry.
Dr. Packer’s research established the cornerstone of the current modern treatments for heart failure, including ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and angiotensin neprilysin inhibitors. He was also instrumental in raising concerns about the use of positive inotropic agents, calcium channel blockers and antiarrhythmic drugs in patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction. In recognition of these achievements, he received the Lewis Katz Lifetime Achievement Award from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Dr. Packer graduated from Pennsylvania State University and received his medical degree from Jefferson Medical College in 1973, completed his residency in internal medicine at Bronx Municipal Hospital Center in 1976 and his fellowship in cardiology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in 1978. He was Professor of Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine until 1992, served as the Dickinson Richards Professor and chief of the Division of Circulatory Physiology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons until 2004, and then as the Stoffel Distinguished Chair in Cardiology and Chair of the Department of Clinical Sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center until 2015.
He has authored over 500 peer-reviewed publications and has been the overall Principal Investigator for 20 large-scale international trials in heart failure. He was a Founding Member and President of the Heart Failure Society of America from 2000-2002, has served on numerous guidelines and standards committees for the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology. Since 1986, he has been a primary consultant to the FDA on matters related to the design and interpretation of clinical trial evidence.
Subodh Verma,MD, PhD, FRCSC, FAHA
Cardiac Surgeon,
St. Michael’s Hospital;
Professor of Surgery and Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Toronto;
Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery; Toronto, ON, Canada
Dr. Subodh Verma is an internationally renowned cardiac surgeon-scientist and Professor at the University of Toronto. He is the Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery and a past recipient of the Howard Morgan Award for Distinguished Achievements in Cardiovascular Research and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Gold Medal in Surgery. He served as Canada Research Chair in Atherosclerosis for 10 years from 2007-2017. He is an appointee of the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) and a member of the College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, Royal Society of Canada. According to Google Scholar, Dr. Verma’s work has been cited over 51,000 times resulting in an h-index of 100.
Dr. Verma has published numerous times in prestigious journals like the NEJM, Lancet, Circulation, JBC, JACC, Nature, and JCI. He continues to be an active contributor to several CCS guidelines; he co-authored the 2018 Diabetes Canada guidelines as well as the 2018 AATS consensus guidelines on bicuspid aortic valve-related aortopathy. Dr. Verma has served on the American Heart Association Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia since 2008.
Dr. Verma has leadership roles on 7 ongoing global heart failure trials in diabetes – DAPA-HF, DELIVER, DETERMINE-A, DETERMINE-B, EMPEROR-Preserved, EMPEROR-Reduced and SOLOIST-WHF – as well as the SELECT (semaglutide) and CLEAR SYNERGY (OASIS 9) trials. He oversees the CardioLink platform that is conducting surgically oriented RCTs and translational studies.
Dr. Verma oversees a dynamic pre-clinical and translational research team that leverages pre-clinical disease models and clinical trial-derived data to identify novel mediators of cardiovascular and cardiometabolic disease as well as answer timely and relevant healthcare questions. This research has yielded 2 United States patents and is currently supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and HSF.
Shelley Zieroth,MD, FRCPC, FCCS, FHFSA, FESC, FACC
Associate Professor of Medicine, University of Manitoba; Director, St. Boniface Hospital Heart Failure and Transplant Clinics; Head,
Medical Heart Failure Program, WRHA Cardiac Sciences Program; President, Canadian Heart Failure Society;
Winnipeg, MB, Canada
Dr. Shelley Zieroth joined the Section of Cardiology at St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg in July 2006. She is currently an Associate Professor in the College of Medicine, Max Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, as well as Director of the Heart Failure and Heart Transplant Clinics. She is also Head of the Medical Heart Failure Program for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, Cardiac Sciences Program.
Dr. Zieroth attended medical school at the University of Manitoba and went on to train in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the same centre. She completed her Postdoctoral Clinical Fellowship, specializing in Advanced Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplant, at Toronto General Hospital.
She is involved in several heart failure clinical trials. Her area of research examines the efficacy of new treatments including food derived bioactives, in human heart failure. She is President of the Canadian Heart Failure Society and on the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Primary Panel for Heart Failure Guidelines. Her current passion is working with national and provincial Patient Advocacy groups and Primary Care to operationalize hub and spoke models of heart failure care. In 2017 she was appointed to the Heart and Stroke Foundation Mission Critical Area Council on Heart Failure.
John J. V. McMurray,MB ChB (Hons), MD, FRCP, FESC, FACC, FAHA, FRSE, FMedSci
Professor of Medical Cardiology and Deputy Director, Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences, University of Glasgow; Honorary Consultant Cardiologist, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital;
Glasgow, Scotland, UK
John McMurray is Professor of Medical Cardiology and Deputy Director (Clinical) of the Institute of Cardiovascular and Medical Sciences at the University of Glasgow and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Glasgow.
Professor McMurray received his MB ChB (Hons) and postgraduate MD degree (by thesis) from the University of Manchester. His primary research interests include heart failure, atrial fibrillation, and the cardiovascular consequences of diabetes and chronic kidney disease, with a focus on clinical trials and epidemiology. He has chaired and participated in numerous clinical trial executive/steering and data-monitoring committees and currently chairs the event adjudication group at Glasgow University, which has served as the endpoint committee for many trials.
Professor McMurray was the lead author of the World Health Organization and first Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network Guidelines on the Management of Heart Failure. In addition, he was a member of the 2008 European Society of Cardiology Heart Failure Guidelines Task Force, Chair of the 2012 Task Force, a member of the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Heart Failure Guidelines Committee, and a member of the 2014 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Acute Heart Failure Guideline Committee. He is a member of NICE Appraisal Committee A. He is also a member of the editorial board of the New England Journal of Medicine and sits on the editorial boards of several leading cardiovascular journals, including the European Heart Journal – where he is an Associate Editor – and Circulation. He has published over 900 original papers, reviews & book chapters and has an H-index of 179. Professor McMurray and Professor Salim Yusuf were jointly awarded the 8th Arrigo Recordati International Prize for Scientific Research in June 2015. Professor McMurray was awarded the MacKenzie medal of the British Cardiovascular Society and the Louis and Artur Lucian Award for Research in Circulatory Diseases in June 2017. Professor McMurray was included in the 2015, 2016, 2017 & 2018 listing of Highly Cited Researchers by Thomson-Reuters (see: http://hcr.stateofinnovation.com/).