Victor Peter Chang was a Chinese-born Australian cardiac surgeon and a pioneer of modern heart transplantation in Australia.
The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI) is an Australian non-profit medical research facility that is dedicated to finding cures for cardiovascular disease. With headquarters located in Darlinghurst, New South Wales, the research hub is home to more than 20 research laboratories and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Innovation Centre. The institute's mission is "the relief of pain and suffering, and the promotion of well-being, through an understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of cardiovascular disease". Its key research is focused on the prevention and treatment of various heart diseases, including arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, cardiomyopathy, congenital heart disease, heart attack, heart failure, high cholesterol, obesity, spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) and stroke.
Abdul Jamil Tajik is a Pakistani American physician and medical investigator in the field of cardiovascular diseases. He is listed by the Institute for Scientific Information as a highly cited researcher – one of the top 250 researchers in his field in terms of number of citations.
Henry Neufeld, was an Israeli cardiologist and scholar. His research and teaching interests included cardiology, epidemiology, genetics and biomedical engineering. He served as chief scientist of the Israel Ministry of Health and was the founder and director of the Cardiac Clinic at Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer.
Stefanie Dimmeler is a German biologist specializing in the pathophysiological processes underlying cardiovascular diseases. Her awards and honours include the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation for her work on the programmed cell death of endothelial cells. Since 2008 she has led the Institute for Cardiovascular Regeneration at the University of Frankfurt. Her current work is focusing to develop cellular and pharmacological strategies to improve cardiovascular repair and regeneration. Her work aims to establish non-coding RNAs as novel therapeutic targets.
Ron Waksman is a cardiologist. He is the Associate Director, Division of Cardiology, Washington Hospital Center (WHC) and professor of medicine (cardiology) at Georgetown University.
James L. Cox is an American cardiothoracic surgeon and medical innovator best known for the development of the Cox maze procedure for treatment of atrial fibrillation in 1987.
Eric Newell Olson is an American molecular biologist. He is professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he also holds the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science, the Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research, and the Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects.
Hugh Christian Watkins is a British cardiologist. He is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, an associate editor of Circulation Research, and was Field Marshal Alexander Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in the University of Oxford between 1996 and 2013.
Walter J. “Wally” Koch is an American scientist best known for his work with G protein-coupled receptors in the heart and gene therapy approaches to cardiovascular disease. He is currently an Instructor at Duke University, and formerly at Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University where he was the Director of the Center for Translational Medicine, Professor and Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology, and W.W. Smith Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine. In 2013, he co-founded the biotech company, Renovacor.
Ashok Seth is an Indian interventional cardiologist, credited with the performance of over 50,000 angiograms and 20,000 angioplasties, which has been included in the Limca Book of Records, a book for achievements and records from an Indian perspective. He is a Fellow of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London, Edinburgh and Ireland and serves as the chief cardiologist, holding the chairs of the department of cardiovascular sciences and cardiology council at the Fortis Healthcare. Seth, a recipient of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, was honored by the Government of India with the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri, in 2003, followed by Padma Bhushan, the third highest Indian civilian award, in 2015.
Nagarur Gopinath was an Indian surgeon and one of the pioneers of cardiothoracic surgery in India. He is credited with the first successful performance of open heart surgery in India which he performed in 1962. He served as the honorary surgeon to two Presidents of India and was a recipient of the fourth highest Indian civilian award of Padma Shri in 1974 and Dr. B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian medical award in 1978 from the Government of India.
Charles Antzelevitch is an American cardiovascular research scientist in the fields of cardiac electrophysiology and cardiac arrhythmia syndromes.
Richard Paul Harvey is a molecular biologist, the Sir Peter Finley professor of Heart Research at the University of New South Wales and Deputy Director and Head of the Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Division at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.
Kewal Kishan Talwar is an Indian cardiologist, medical academic and writer, and a former chairman of the Medical Council of India. He is a former director of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) and is reported to have performed the first implantation of Implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) therapy in South Asia. He is also credited with the introduction of Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy in India. He is a recipient of several honours including B. C. Roy Award, the highest Indian award in the medical category. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 2006, for his contributions to medicine. Presently Dr. Talwar is working in PSRI Hospital Sheikh Sarai, New Delhi as the chairman of Cardiac Sciences
Kenneth R. Chien is an American doctor and medical scientist who has been a research director at Karolinska Institute, in Stockholm, since 2013. Chien has several papers with over 1,000 citations and a h-index of 132. His area of expertise is cardiovascular science. His research into regenerative cardiovascular medicine, specifically while director of the Cardiovascular Program of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, led to his co-founding, in 2010, of ModeRNA Therapeutics. In 2018, the company re-branded as Moderna, Inc. Chien is a recipient of the Walter Bradford Cannon Award of the American Physiology Society and the Pasarow Award. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and has received an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.
Stephen J. Nicholls FRACP, FACC, FESC, FAHA, FAHMS, is an Australian cardiologist. He was appointed to the position of director of MonashHeart, Monash Health and professor of cardiology, Monash University in October 2018. He is the inaugural clinical director of the Victorian Heart Hospital. He is also the inaugural director of Monash University’s Victorian Heart Institute, an organisation dedicated to creating the cardiovascular health solutions of the future.
Partho P. Sengupta is an Indian-American cardiologist. He is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Cardiology and Chief of the Division of Cardiovascular Disease & Hypertension at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (RWJMS) and the Chief of Cardiology, Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital (RWJUH) since July 1, 2021. Between 2019 and 2021, Dr. Sengupta was the Abnash C. Jain Chair & Professor of Cardiology at West Virginia University School of Medicine and the Chief of Division of Cardiology, Chair of Cardiovascular Innovation and Director of Cardiac Imaging at West Virginia University Heart and Vascular Institute.
Günter Breithardt is a German physician, cardiologist and emeritus university professor. He is known for his research in the field of rhythmology, especially the diagnosis and pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapy of cardiac arrhythmias and acute cardiac death, in particular the identification of arrhythmia-triggering gene mutations. For 21 years he headed the Medical Clinic and Polyclinic C at Münster University Hospital. A number of his academic students hold university management and chief physician positions.
Jason C. Kovacic is an Australian-born cardiologist and physician-scientist; the Robert Graham Chair and Professor of Medicine, University of New South Wales; Executive Director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute in Sydney, Australia; and Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.
