INVITED SPEAKERS
The 4 Corners of Cardiology Meeting Organising Committee would like introduce the following invited speakers as part of the 2024 program.
Risk Factors and Prevention
A/Prof Sarah Zaman
Biography
Associate Professor Sarah Zaman is an Academic Interventional Cardiologist at Westmead Hospital and the Westmead Applied Research Centre, University of Sydney, Australia. A/Prof Zaman is a national leader in academic cardiology, as a Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellow and through her roles on guideline writing committees. She has been recognized internationally within interventional cardiology; selected from a world-wide application process to be a United States’ SCAI-ELM Fellow and to take part in The Lancet commission on ischaemic heart disease. A/Prof Zaman has a PhD from the University of Sydney, targeting prevention of sudden cardiac death. She leads a Women’s Heart Disease Research Program at the University of Sydney that involves clinical trial and cohort studies. She has received $4.6 million in competitive grant funding, ~$9 million in Industry support and has published 84 journal articles/book chapters. She is regularly invited faculty to international scientific meetings (e.g. TCT, ACC and SCAI) and organizes the Australian/New Zealand Endovascular Therapies Scientific Sessions. A/Prof Sarah Zaman is an active advocate for women in cardiology, having co-founded the Women in Cardiology groups for Australia/New Zealand.
Prof Kausik Ray FMedSci
Biography
Professor Kausik Ray FMedSci
Professor of Public Heath, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Imperial College London & Honorary Consultant Cardiologist, Imperial College NHS Trust
Prof Ray is currently President of the European Atherosclerosis Society, Chair of the World Heart Federation Cholesterol Roadmap, Chair for Global Council for Heart Health, National Lead for CVD NIHR Academic research Collaboration, Clinical Director for Research HDR UK Digital Innovation Hub DISCOVER Now, Director of ICTU-Global which is an academic ARO.
He received his medical education (MB ChB, 1991) at the University of Birmingham Medical School, his MD (2004) at the University of Sheffield, a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and finally an MPhil in epidemiology (2007) from the University of Cambridge. His research involves lipids, diabetes and population health serving as global lead for trials and registries. He has >150,000 citations and since 2018 has been recognised by Clarivate Analytics as among the top 0.1% of authors in global medicine. In 2023 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, which is UK’s highest honour for clinician scientists.
Prof Peter J Meikle
Biography
Senior Principal Research Fellow
Head, Metabolomics Laboratory
Co-Lead, Obesity and Lipids Program
Head, Systems Biology Domain
Head, Baker Department of Cardiovascular Research Translation and Implementation, La Trobe University
Professor Peter Meikle is Head of the Systems Biology Domain, Co-Lead of the Obesity and Lipids Program and Head of the Metabolomics Laboratory at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute. He is co-Director of the Australian Cardiovascular Alliance, Precision Medicine Flagship and was recently appointed Head of the Baker Department of Cardiovascular Research, Translation and Implementation at La Trobe University. His research has a focus on the dysregulation of lipid metabolism associated with metabolic diseases including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular and Alzheimer’s disease, and its relationship to the pathogenesis of these disease states. This work is leading to new approaches to early diagnosis and risk assessment, and to the development of new lipid modulating therapies for chronic disease.
Heart Failure
Prof Andrew J Stewart Coats
Biography
Prof Andrew J Stewart Coats is Scientific Director and CEO of the Heart Research Institute in Sydney having recently served as Dean of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. Andrew past roles have included Dean of Medicine and Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, head of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial College London, and Joint Academic Vice-President of the University of Warwick, UK, and Monash University, Australia as well as CEO of the Norwich Research and Innovation Park. He was President of the Heart Failure Association of the ESC (2020-2022). Andrew was born and schooled in Melbourne and studied medicine at Oxford and Cambridge. He has more than 150,000 citations, and an H-index of 155. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Cardiology from1999 to 2016. Andrew has been Chairman or Committee member of multiple major clinical trials and specializes in the study of heart failure.
Dr William Abraham
Biography
William T. Abraham, M.D., F.A.C.P., F.A.C.C., F.A.H.A., F.E.S.C., F.R.C.P.E.
Professor of Internal Medicine, Physiology and Cell Biology
College of Medicine Distinguished Professor
The Ohio State University
Dr. Abraham earned his medical degree from Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, following which he completed his residency in Internal Medicine and fellowships in Cardiovascular Disease and Advanced Heart Failure/Transplant Cardiology at the University of Colorado. He previously held leadership positions at the University of Colorado, the University of Cincinnati, the University of Kentucky, and The Ohio State University. At Ohio State, Dr. Abraham held several leadership positions including an Associate Dean position. As Director of the Clinical Trials Management Organization, Dr. Abraham managed the College of Medicine’s non-cancer clinical and translational research portfolio of more than 1,800 studies. As Division Director, Dr. Abraham developed one of the largest and most successful academic programs of Cardiovascular Medicine in the U.S.
Clinically, Dr. Abraham is board certified in Internal Medicine and Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology. He spends most of his clinical time managing acute and chronic heart failure patients. Dr. Abraham has been recognized as one of the “Best Doctors in America” for twenty consecutive years and is ranked among the top 10% of physicians nationally for patient satisfaction. Dr. Abraham’s research activities focus on elucidating basic mechanisms in heart failure and on clinical drug and device development in heart failure. Dr. Abraham has received grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) including more than $11 million in NIH funding over the past five years, the American College of Cardiology, and the Aetna Quality Care Foundation. He has made major contributions to advancing basic and clinical science in heart failure in several areas including neurohormonal mechanisms, cardiorenal interactions, and the relationship between sleep and heart failure. Dr. Abraham has participated in all clinical and regulatory phases of new drug and device development for heart failure, frequently as national or international principal investigator for Phase 1 through Phase 3 trials. His work has led to the approval and adoption of several new therapies for heart failure, including beta-blockers, natriuretic peptides, cardiac resynchronization therapy, ultrafiltration, non-invasive and implantable hemodynamic monitoring systems, transvenous phrenic nerve stimulation, cardiac contractility modulation, transcatheter mitral valve repair, and baroreflex activation therapy. Dr. Abraham has authored more than 1,500 original papers, abstracts, book chapters, and review articles. His work has been published in high impact journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, the European Heart Journal, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Dr. Abraham serves on the editorial boards of several major journals. He has been named to the Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) Highly Cited Researchers list and as one of The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds. In 2017, he received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American College of Cardiology, in recognition of his contributions to advancing cardiovascular medicine. In 2022, Dr. Abraham received the Pioneer Award from the Heart Failure Society of America, given to an innovator in the field of heart failure.
Dr Stacey Peters
Biography
Dr. Stacey Peters is a cardiologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she specialises in cardiac genetics and leads the Genetic Cardiomyopathy service. Her research in dilated and arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies has generated several highly cited publications, and work from her PhD was recently awarded the prestigious Ralph Reader Prize for Clinical Science at CSANZ 2023. She continues to work as a clinician researcher and her work centres on genetic and phenotypic aspects of inherited cardiomyopathies.
Interventional/ ACS
Prof Dion Stub
Biography
Prof Dion Stub is an Interventional Cardiologist and Co-director of Centre Cardiovascular Research and Education in Therapeutics Monash University, with leadership positions on major pre-hospital and hospital cardiac registries in Victoria. Dion has published over 250 papers and delivered multiple presentations in both cardiac emergencies and structural heart intervention, and has been internationally recognized for his research. He currently holds the National Heart Foundation Future Leader and NHMRC Fellowships to support his clinical research, and is cardiology medical advisor to Ambulance Victoria.
Dr Emily Granger
Biography
MBBS. (Hons) FRACS
Cardiothoracic Surgeon, Transplant Surgeon
Dr Emily Granger is a Cardiothoracic and Heart Lung Transplant surgeon. She has performed more than 3000 general cardiothoracic operations and more than 300 heart and lung transplants. Her areas of interest include TAVI, ECMO, transplants and trauma surgery.
Emily completed her medical degree at the University of Queensland (1997) and her surgical fellowship with the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) in 2006. She is involved with the NSW Organ Tissue Donation Service and Deceased Donor Organ Procurement, and, in 2014, was involved in the world’s first successful ‘donation after circulatory death’ heart transplant. Since then, the Transplant Unit at St Vincent’s Hospital has performed over 80 Dcd heart transplants.
Dr Granger lectures at the Clinical Medical School at St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of Notre Dame, and is active in teaching medical students, junior doctors, and trainee surgeons. She is an EMST and CCRISP instructor with RACS. In 2017, she was appointed to the Board of Cardiothoracic Surgical Examiners. She is currently the President of the ANZ Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons.