Dr Sarah BERRY
BSc,MSc, PhD
Reader in Nutritional Sciences
King’s College London
Department of Nutritional Sciences, London, UK
Sarah Berry is a Reader in Nutritional Sciences at King’s College London. Her research interests relate to the influence of dietary components on cardiometabolic disease risk, with particular focus on; personalised nutrition, postprandial lipid metabolism and food and fat structure. Since commencing her research career at King’s, she has been the academic leader for more than 30 human nutrition studies in cardio-metabolic health. Sarah has made a leading contribution to the knowledge-base on the manipulation of food and fat structure and subsequent effects on lipid and carbohydrate bioaccessibility and postprandial metabolism.
Sarah is also the lead nutritional scientist on the PREDICT programme of research, assessing the genetic, metabolic, metagenomic, and meal-dependent effects on metabolic responses to food in >30,000 individuals in the UK and US. This research is at the forefront of developments in personalised nutrition and is forging a new way forward in the design and implementation of large-scale remote nutrition research studies integrating novel technologies, citizen science and AI.
Professor Alberico L. CATAPANO
PhD, MDhc
Professor of Pharmacology
University of Milan
Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences
Milan, ITALY
Alberico Catapano is Full Professor of Pharmacology, Director of the Center of Epidemiology and Preventive Pharmacology (SEFAP) as well as Director of the Laboratory of Lipoproteins, Immunity and Atherosclerosis at the University of Milan (Department of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences) and PhD coordinator from 2017 to 2020.
Moreover he is Director of the Center for the Study, Prevention and Therapy of Atherosclerosis of the University of Milan, at the Bassini Hospital, Head of Cardiovascular Research Line at Multimedica IRCCS Sesto San Giovanni (Mi), President of the Italian Society of Clinical and Sperimental Therapy (SITeCS) and General Director of the SISA Foundation.
Past President of the European Atherosclerosis Society (EAS), Professor Catapano is currently Co-Chairman of the EAS/European Society of Cardiology (ESC) guidelines for the treatment of dyslipoproteinaemias. Editor of Atherosclerosis Supplements, Co-editor of Atherosclerosis and Associate Editor of other scientific journals, he has authored more than 590 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals (I.F. 10.929) and is among the highly cited scientists in 2019, 2020 and 2021 according to Clarivate.
Prof Nish CHATURVEDI
MD
Director MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL
UCL
Institute Cardiovascular Sciences
London, UK
Nish is a professor of clinical epidemiology. She obtained her first degree in medicine at London University in 1985, and then went on to specialist training in general medicine, public health and epidemiology. She was appointed to a chair in the National Heart & Lung Institute at Imperial College London in 2000, and then to the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences at UCL in 2014. Her research career includes leadership of international observational studies and clinical trials in understanding and mitigating the complications of diabetes. She leads the Southall and Brent Revisited (SABRE) tri-ethnic cohort, designed to study ethnic differences in risks and consequences of cardiometabolic disease. She was appointed director of the MRC Unit for Lifelong Health & Ageing at UCL in 2017. In 2020, she was asked to lead the Lifelong Health & Wellbeing Covid-19 National Core Study, uniting research using national anonymised electronic health records and population cohorts.
Prof Derek CONNOLLY
(PhD, MSc..) BSc[Hons] MB ChB[Edin] Phd{Cantab] FRCP
Consultant Cardiologist and Director of R&D
Birmingham City Hospital
Department of Cardiology
Clinical Research Facility
West Bromwich, UK
Dr Derek Connolly is a Consultant Interventional Cardiologist and the Director of Research and Development at Birmingham City Hospital. He is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Institute of Cardiovascular Sciences, University of Birmingham, UK.
He trained in Edinburgh, Cambridge, London and San Diego where he was a Carnegie Scholar. He has a first class degree in Pharmacology from the University of Edinburgh where he was the Brunton medallist and Keasbey Bursary holder. His BHF funded PhD in molecular cardiology is from the University of Cambridge. He is the Chief or Primary Investigator of multiple large trials in Cardiovascular medicine. He developed one of the UKs first primary angioplasty programmes, and one of the UKs largest cardiac CT programmes.
He was on the design and naming team of the forthcoming super hospital, the Midland Metropolitan University Hospital which will open 2022.
Prof John DEANFIELD CBE
Professor of Cardiology
University College London (UCL)
London
John Deanfield CBE is Professor of Cardiology at University College London (UCL) and Director of National Institute for Cardiovascular Outcomes Research (NICOR) which incorporates the national databases for cardiovascular outcomes.
Deanfield undertook his training at Churchill College, Cambridge, the Middlesex, Hammersmith and Great Ormond Street Hospitals, London. His principal interests are vascular medicine, opportunities for lifetime management of cardiovascular risk and large scale cardiovascular outcomes research. He has been at the forefront in describing the impact of obesity, cholesterol, diabetes, smoking and other risk factors on health in later life, through coordination of multiple large longitudinal cardiovascular studies in population throughout lifetime
He Chaired the Joint British Societies (JBS3) National Guidelines for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention (2014) and led the development of the public facing Heart Age Tool (2015). He was awarded the British Cardiac Society McKenzie Award, the John Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Decades of Service Award in 2017 and was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2021. He Chaired the UK’s National Health Check Programme Review (2021) and is Chief Medical Advisor to the new national Our Future Health programme (2020). He is currently Chairing the development of the new JBS4 Consensus Guidelines.
Professor Deanfield serves on many international advisory boards and is a member of the editorial boards of several major CV journals. He has published numerous articles in leading medical and scientific journals. Papers published: >525 Citations: >164K H index: 147.
Dr Michael FORSTER
Scientific Affairs Director
Olink Proteomics
Prof Iris JAFFE
MD, PhD
Executive Director of the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute (MCRI), Director of the MCRI Vascular Biology
Tufts Medical Center
Molecular Cardiology Research Institute
Boston, USA
Iris Jaffe is the Executive Director of the Molecular Cardiology Research Institute (MCRI) at Tufts Medical Center and the Elisa Kent Mendelsohn Professor of Molecular Cardiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Jaffe received her MD degree and her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from the U. of Pennsylvania. She went on to complete Internal Medicine residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital and Cardiology Fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both in Boston. For 15 years her lab in the MCRI has focused on exploring molecular mechanisms of common cardiovascular diseases including hypertension and atherosclerosis with a focus on the role of the vascular mineralocorticoid receptor. Her work has advanced our molecular understanding of how sex, aging, obesity and more recently cancer therapies contribute to vascular diseases. Dr. Jaffe is Associate Editor of Circulation and recently chaired the Vascular Cell and Molecular Biology study section at the US National Institutes of Health. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Established Investigator Award from the AHA and election into the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP).
Prof. Preston MASON
PhD, MBA
Senior Faculty
Harvard Medical School
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Boston, USA
Since 2001, Dr. Preston Mason has served as a senior faculty member of the Cardiovascular Division at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Dr Mason is also President of Elucida Research, a biotechnology research institute. He has received many awards for his research in cardiovascular pharmacology and teaching over the past 30 years. He received a full scholarship for graduate and medical programs at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine. Prior to coming to Boston, he was on the faculties of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and the Medical College of Pennsylvania (now Drexel University) where he was nominated for full professor.
Dr. Mason has served on a number of grant review committees for the National Institute of Health and has been a reviewer for a number of prestigious journals. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 scientific publications, has multiple patents and receives frequent requests to speak at national and international conferences.
Prof Nehal N. MEHTA
MD MSCE
Clinical Professor of Medicine
The George Washington University
Department of Cardiology
Washington, USA
Dr. Nehal Mehta has made numerous seminal scientific advances and is recognized as an international expert in inflammatory cardiometabolic dysfunction. His clinical research model harnessed psoriasis as an ‘inflammatory stimulus’ to dissect the pathophysiology of early vascular disease development. His lab has made contributions to understanding how immune cell activation drives atherosclerotic disease initiation, formation, and progression in humans.
Prof Gerard PASTERKAMP
MD, PhD
Professor Experimental Cardiology
UMC Utrecht
Utrecht, The Netherlands
Gerard Pasterkamp, MD, PhD, is Professor of Experimental Cardiology and his research is embedded in the laboratory of clinical chemistry, UMC Utrecht, the Netherlands. The laboratory houses researchers and technicians that cover a broad range of activities. His research interests are in the field of cardiovascular biology and more specifically innovation in biomarkers and drug targets. The research group houses the largest atherosclerotic plaque biobank worldwide: Athero-Express including >4000 patients. This biobank has generated new insights into determinants of plaque destabilisation. For example, it has been demonstrated that local plaque characteristics are strongly associated with long term outcome but also that plaque characteristics have rapidly changed in the last decade. The laboratory now invests in the excavation of genetic determinants of atherosclerotic plaque characteristics. Recent insights in the mechanisms of atherosclerosis progression have been obtained by executing whole genome SNP analyses and plaque DNA methylation as well as single cell sequencing.
Private public research projects are one of the main core-activities within his group. Within the laboratories spin off activities are stimulated. He coordinates national and EU based consortia with the aim to unravel biomarkers and mechanisms of atherosclerotic disease. He is supervising three public private grants that have been rewarded with the aim to develop novel biomarkers and imaging technology to detect cardiac ischemia and endothelial dysfunction. In 2018 he obtained a LeDucq grant together with Prof G Owens (Virginia University) on the role of smooth muscle cell plasticity in the atherosclerotic plaque.
Prof Paul M RIDKER
MD, MPH, FAHA, FACC
Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine
Harvard Medical School
Director, Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention
Division of Preventive Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Boston, USA
Dr. Paul M Ridker, MD (Harvard Medical School 1985), MPH (Harvard School of Public Health 1990), serves as the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and as Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston Massachusetts. Over a 30-year period, Dr. Ridker and his collaborators provided the first proof-of-principle for the inflammation hypothesis of atherothrombosis in humans, the first FDA-approved diagnostic test for vascular inflammation (hsCRP), and the first proven anti-inflammatory treatment for heart disease. On multiple occasions this work has altered clinical guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of atherosclerotic disease – the most common cause of death on a global basis. As a direct consequence of this work, multiple anti-inflammatory agents targeting interrelated aspects of heart disease are now under development at nearly all major pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
Dr. Ridker is additionally known for his leadership of over 15 major multi-national randomized clinical trials including PREVENT, JUPITER, SPIRE-1, SPIRE-2, CANTOS, CIRT, PROMINENT, and ZEUS. The recipient of multiple honorary degrees and international awards, Dr. Ridker is a Distinguished Scientist of the American Heart Association and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA
Professor Naveed SATTAR
PhD, FMedSci
Professor of Metabolic Medicine
University of Glasgow
School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Health, BHF Glasgow Cardiovascular Research Centre
Glasgow, UK
Naveed Sattar is a clinical academic working across several aspects of cardiometabolic Medicine. He has been involved with or led several trials (lifestyle and medicines-related) in diabetes and cardiovascular disease and is currently Associate Editor for Circulation and Diabetes Care. He has received several national and international awards (including the recent Camillo Golgi Lecture, EASD, 2020) and has contributed to over 10 international guidelines. Finally, Naveed has co-authored over 1000 papers, collectively cited over 100K times, placing him at #21 in the UK for medicine in a recent listing. https://research.com/scientists-rankings/medicine/gb
Dr Nicola SMART
BSc PhD
BHF Ian Fleming Senior Research Fellow/Associate Professor
University of Oxford
Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics
Oxford, UK
Nicola Smart is a BHF Senior Research Fellow, Associate Professor at the Department of Physiology Anatomy & Genetics, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow at Christ Church college. Since 2011, Nicola has been the recipient of the Ian Fleming Fellowship, funded by the family of the James Bond author in support of the work of the BHF. Nicola relocated to Oxford in 2012, following a BHF Intermediate Fellowship at the UCL-Institute of Child Health and postdoctoral research at King’s College London. Nicola was awarded the BHF Research Fellow of the Year in 2011 and the British Cardiovascular Society’s Michael Davies Early Career Award in 2012, in recognition of her research on reactivating embryonic mechanisms to regenerate the mammalian heart. Nicola’s research continues to focus on understanding how to manipulate reparative responses and promote vessel growth and stability, based on insights from cardiovascular development. Her recent work revealing mechanisms that maintain smooth muscle differentiation during aortic disease was recognised by the award of the John French Prize Lecture from the British Atherosclerosis Society.
Prof Erik STROES
MD
Internist Vascular medicine
Amsterdam University Medical Center
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Erik Stroes received his internal medicine degree at university medical center Utrecht. Since early 2000 he is working at the dept of vascular medicine at Amsterdam University medical center. He runs a tertiary lipid clinic at the AMC. He is also director of the national institute for detection of Familial Hypercholesterolemia in the Netherlands (LEEFH) and chair of the Dutch Atherosclerosis Society
His research interests focus around lipids, inflammation and atherogenesis. Main interests involve biomarkers and cardiovascular imaging in order to assist tailored treatment algorithms. He also leads the Clinical Trial Buro vascular medicine, where numerous phase II and III trials are ongoing. He has (co-)authored more than 490 articles in peer-reviewed journals (H-index 90).
Prof Signe Sørensen TOREKOV
Professor of Clinical Translational Metabolism
University of Copenhagen
Department of Biomedical Sciences
Copenhagen, DENMARK
Signe Torekov leads the Clinical Translational Metabolism Group, which has the overall goal of creating evidence of how to obtain healthy weight throughout life. The group is highly experienced with clinical experimental interventions, characterising and integrating the complex psychological and biological mechanisms underlying obesity. Excellent experience within the field of interdisciplinary healthy weight loss maintenance with diet-induced weight loss, exercise programs and obesity medication most recently published as state of the art in the New England Journal of Medicine. This approach has now been implemented in obesity clinics in Denmark and UK. Principal investigator of several randomised controlled trials within obesity treatment and childhood obesity cohorts integrating appetite regulation, diet, physical activity and behavioural aspects to investigate prevention, mechanisms and treatment of childhood-onset obesity.
Prof Torekovs research has been published in high-ranking journals including last authorships of original studies in The New England Journal of Medicine (IF 91), Cell Metabolism (IF 27), Circulation (IF 21), Gastroenterology (IF 23), Nature Communication (15) and many more. She also received the Anders Jahre Medical Prize for young researchers.
