FACULTY 2021

Dr. Albert is a Professor of Cardiology and the founding Chair of the Department of Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She is also the Lee and Harold Kapelovitz Distinguished Chair in Cardiology within the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. Additionally, Dr. Albert is a Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School and an Epidemiologist at Brigham and Women s Hospital. Dr. Albert received her MD from Harvard Medical School and MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health. She completed her Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and Cardiac Electrophysiology training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Albert is currently the Principal Investigator on two NIH-sponsored R01s, and her research focuses on epidemiology, risk stratification, and prevention of sudden cardiac death and atrial fibrillation in large prospective cohort designs and in multi-center clinical studies; most notably, seminal contributions regarding the contribution of diet, lifestyle, and genetics to the burden of heart rhythm disorders. Dr. Albert serves on the editorial boards of Heart Rhythm & Circulation and is the President of the Heart Rhythm Society.

He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC), and an Assistant Professor at the UniversitÈ de MontrÈal. Dr. Andrade is the Director of the Electrophysiology Laboratory at VGH, as well as Director of the Atrial Fibrillation Clinic at VGH. He also serves as co-chair of the Canadian Cardiovascular Society Atrial Fibrillation Guidelines committee and serves as the medical chair for Heart Rhythm Disease for the Cardiovascular Disease Network in the province of British Columbia. He previously served as chair of the education committee for the Canadian Heart Rhythm Society, and is currently a member of the CHRS Device Committee.

Dr. Andrade is the principal investigator of several multicenter randomised clinical trials on cryoablation (the CIRCA-DOSE study and the EARLY-AF program). He has authored or co-authored over 170 scientific publications, predominantly in the domain of atrial fibrillation. His publications can be found in journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Circulation, JACC, JAMA, and Heart Rhythm. He is also the author of a handbook of cardiac electrophysiology, a handbook of electrocardiogram interpretation, and several chapters related to atrial fibrillation, ablation, and cardiac cryoablation.

Dr. Anter is the Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. HE specializes in the diagnosis and management of cardiac arrhythmias and prevention of sudden death. His clinical practice focuses on the treatment of complex heart rhythm disorders with catheter ablation. His research laboratory is dedicated to the study of arrhythmia mechanisms and development of new technologies to improve ablative therapies. Dr. Anter is the recipient of the Mark E. Josephson scholarship award, providing funding support for training of physician scientists in his laboratory. He serves as the principal investigator for multiple pre-clinical and clinical trials, and lectures nationally and internationally on his research and specialty interests, including advances in catheter ablation. Dr. Anter’s work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation: Arrhythmia Electrophysiology and the Heart Rhythm Journal.

In addition to developing new ways to treat heart rhythm disorders with catheters inside the body, Dr. Cuculich leads a team of investigators who are pioneering an entirely noninvasive way to target and treat abnormal heart rhythms. This process uses focused radiation to the abnormal scar areas of the heart, in a similar way to treating cancer.

First report of this collaborative work was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and results from the first prospective trial won the James T. Willerson Award for Best Paper in Clinical Science in Circulation in 2019. Dr. Cuculich is the co-Director of the Center for Noninvasive Cardiac Radioablation (CNCR, pronounced conquer ) and is widely considered a world leader in the field of noninvasive ablation.

He has authored and co-authored over 355 papers in peer reviewed journals, edited over 15 textbooks and 200 review articles and editorials. He has served on several NIH panels, steering committees for NIH and industry sponsored trials as well as the Data Safety and Monitoring Boards for many trials. He has served on multiple electrophysiology committees for the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and the Heart Rhythm Society. He has contributed to research in catheter ablation of atrial fibrillation, hybrid ablation, and phhysiologic pacing. He has served on the Editorial Board and as a Senior Editor of Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, Heart Rhythm, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Pacing and Clinical Electrophysiology.

Consultant Electrophysiologist & Member of Arrhythmia Alliance Executive Committee

Dr Sabine Ernst is a cardiac electrophysiologist with special expertise in complex arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation and ventricular arrhythmia in both paediatric and adult patients.

She holds the position of research lead in electrophysiology at Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust and has been a Reader at Imperial College London since 2012.

His career spans three decades and he was part of the team which carried out the first radiofrequency catheter ablations in the world in the late 1980s in Münster, Germany. He later helped develop radiofrequency catheter ablation on a clinical basis and establish it as a cornerstone for the treatment of many arrhythmias. He heads one of the largest electrophysiology departments in Europe in the Heart Center Leipzig in Germany, providing services for up to 5000 patients and performing almost 2500 interventions for arrhythmias per year.

He is also the Chief Medical Officer of the whole Heart Center Leipzig, one of the biggest heart centers of Europe with approx. 500 beds. He is also General Manager of the Leipzig Heart Institute, a large Research & Development unit in Leipzig.

He has been involved with the management of the European Heart Rhythm Association for over a decade. He has served as President of EHRA from June 2015 to June 2017. He previously served as the committee chair for international affairs and also chaired the programme committee for EUROPACE 2011, which produced a highly successful congress in Spain.

He has been for many years Deputy Editor of the European Heart Journal with specific tasks and interests in the field of electrophysiology and cardiac arrhythmia and has also served as Senior Guest Editor on Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology in North America. From July 2017 he is Editor-in-Chief of EP Europace.

Professor Lüscher studied medicine at the Uni-versity of Zurich and obtained board certification in internal medicine and cardiology. He trained at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, USA and was later Professor of Pharmacotherapy at the University of Basel, then Professor of Cardiology at the University of Berne and Professor and Chairman of Cardiology at the University Hospital Zurich. He is now Director of Research, Edu-cation & Development and Consulting Cardio-logist at the Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospital Trust and Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute of the Imperial College in London.

Professor Lüscher has been a mentor of numerous physicians, also from Japan. His research is translational and focuses on vascular disease, specifically on the role of endothelium-derived mediators in the regulation of vascular tone and structure, platelet-vessel wall interactions, coagulation in aging, hypertension, lipid disorders and atherosclerosis as well as inflammatory pathways He has published extensively and has been rated as one of the 0.5% most cited scientists worldwide. He is a mian editor of the ESC Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine, Oxford University Press and was editor-in-chief of the European Heart Journal 2009-2020. He is now secretary/treasurer of the European Society of Cardiology.

Dr Markides is a Consultant Cardiologist with a special interest in arrhythmias. He is Director of the Heart Division at The Royal Brompton Hospital and Deputy Medical Director at Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals Clinical Group within GSTT.

He graduated from University College Dublin Medical School in 1998 and completed a PhD in cardiovascular physiology at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar (1992-1995). He trained in general medicine and cardiology in London, followed by subspecialty training in cardiac electrophysiology at St Mary’s Hospital. From 2005-2006, Dr O’Neill completed a clinical research fellowship in Bordeaux with Professors Michel Haïssaguerre and Pierre Jaïs where began his interest in atrial arrhythmias. In October 2009, he joined St Thomas’ Hospital and King’s College London in the Department of Cardiology and School of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering and was promoted to Reader in 2011 and Professor in 2013. He is the Departmental Lead for Arrhythmias in Adult Congenital Heart Disease, the Divisional Research. Lead for Electrophysiology and the Joint Clinical Director for the Cardiovascular Division. His primary research interests are the development and use of advanced signal processing and imaging technologies to improve arrhythmia characterization and treatment in patients with heart rhythm disturbances.

Vivek Y. Reddy, MD, is the Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology for The Mount Sinai Health System, and the Helmsley Trust Professor of Medicine in the Kravis Cardiovascular Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is an internationally-recognized academic Cardiac Electrophysiologist who has been at the vanguard of innovation in cardiac electrophysiology, and associated disciplines. Over the past 20 years, he has performed multiple early stage and first-in-human clinical studies in techniques and technologies designed to treat cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure and structural heart disease.

Focus on interventional treatment of all kinds of cardiac arrhythmias with emphasis on atrial fibrillation treatment and treatment of ventricular tachycardias.

Specializing in the treatment of heart arrhythmias, Dr. Varma’s special interests include ablation for atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia, defibrillator implantation and biventricular pacing.

Dr. Varma is a dedicated researcher who has received grants from the American Heart Association, a National Research Service Award, as well as industry funding for studies of innovative technologies. For example, he led the first clinical applications of electrocardiographic imaging (ECGI) and pioneered the use of remote monitoring technology of implantable devices, leading the landmark trial evaluating its clinical application. The results have been pivotal and adopted widely to improve the care of patients receiving such cardiac devices worldwide.

A frequent invited lecturer at scientific and educational symposia, Dr. Varma has presented on cardiac resynchronization therapy, implantable cardiac defibrillators, remote device monitoring and other related topics at leading local, national and international symposia. He is a reviewer for several leading medical journals, including New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Circulation and Circulation Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and JACC Electrophysiology and Heart Rhythm. Dr Varma is immediate past president to ISHNE and serves on the Scientific and Clinical Documents Committee of HRS.

Between 2003 and 2020 he served as head of the Department of Clinical and Experimental Cardiology (Academic Medical Centre) and between 2012 and 2019 as Chair of the Heart Centre Division, AMC. He published over 600 SCI papers with a major focus on different aspects of inherited arrhythmia syndromes.

In 2011 he was appointed as member of the Dutch Academy of Science and in 2012 he received the Distinguished Investigator award of the Heart Rhythm Society. Since 2017 he leads the European Research Network (ERN) GUARD-heart on inherited diseases of the heart.

Sophia is one of the two Principal Cardiac Scientists at Barts Health NHS Trust, managing near 140 Cardiographer and scientific staff across 5 hospital sites. She leads the arrhythmia scientists across the Trust and is responsible for the strategic and operational management of the device follow-up clinics. Sophia has a special interest in arrhythmia diagnosis and treatment, which fits perfectly to her role and has a passion for people management and leadership. Aside from all the hard work, she’s a wife and step-mum to two teenage boys, a plant-mum attempting to grow a forest in her London flat and loves a good chat over a beetroot latte.

He is the clinical lead of the Arrhythmia Services and the research lead of the Arrhythmia Group across the Royal Brompton and Harefield sites.

Dr Tom Wong’s career focuses on providing the best clinical care to patients with heart rhythm abnormalities and exploring avenues to further improve care through research and innovation.

His research program relates to his clinical interests to seek better understanding and treatment of arrhythmias in advanced disease states and complex cardiac anatomies, particular through catheter-based interventions.

Dr Tom Wong conducted ARC-HF clinical trial, first to show the beneficial effects of catheter ablation in cardiopulmonary performance compared to drug therapy in patients with persistent atrial fibrillation and heart failure. He published the cost impact of the left atrial appendage closure in stroke prevention based upon the UK cost model to inform the economic benefit, beyond the clinical needs, of this treatment to patient at risk of having stroke in UK. He is the chief investigator of CASA-AF trial, funded by NIHR, to compare catheter and thoracoscopic ablation approaches to treat persistent atrial fibrillation. In addition, he has and continue to investigate novel mapping, ablation and device related technologies with an aim to improve clinical outcomes.

Dr Roger Winkle cofounded one of the first academic arrhythmia services and in 1984 he founded Silicon Valley Cardiology, one of the first private EP groups in the US. He helped develop the modern ICD, was involved in the open heart surgical mapping almost 1000 cases of VT, WPW, and AVNRT and has performed thousands of RF ablations.

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Dr Francis Murgatroyd is a consultant cardiologist at King’s College Hospital in London, specializing exclusively in the treatment of heart rhythm disorders. He was appointed in 2000 as a Consultant Cardiologist at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, before moving to King’s in 2004.

Dr Murgatroyd completed his first degree at Cambridge, qualifying medically from Oxford University in 1985. He trained in cardiology at St George’s Hospital in London, and in Leicester, completing a senior fellowship at the University of Western Ontario. His clinical and research interests include all aspects of arrhythmia treatment, including catheter ablation, pacemaker and defibrillator therapy.