Prof. Dr. med. Stephan Achenbach is the Chairman of the Department of Cardiology and Professor of Medicine at the University of Erlangen, Germany. His main clinical interests are Interventional Cardiology, General Cardiology as well as Cardiac Imaging. His research is focused on cardiac interventions and cardiac imaging with a special focus on computed tomography of the heart and the use of imaging to support coronary and structural procedures. Stephan Achenbach was the Founding President of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He has been Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography. He has been on the Board of the European Society of Cardiology since 2012, serving as Councillor (2012-2014), Vice President (2014-2016), Chairman of the Congress Programme Committee (2016-2018) and President-Elect (2018-2020). He is the President of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) for the mandate 2020 to 2022.

Professor of (Tissue) Homeostasis in Cardiology & Metabolism at Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Germany

Dr Stefan D Anker is a Professor of (Tissue) Homeostasis in Cardiology & Metabolism at Berlin-Brandenburg Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT), Charité – Universitätsmedizin, Berlin.

Anker has been a member of the German Cardiac Society and of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) since 1995. He is currently Vice President of the ESC in charge of National Cardiac Societies and Communications. He has been serving on the board of the ESC since 2012. In addition, he has been serving on the board of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC since 2006. He was HFA President between 2012 and 2014 and he currently chairs the HFA committee on regulatory affairs.

Anker is the Founding President of the International Society on Sarcopenia, Cachexia and Wasting Disorders (SCWD).

In his research field at BCRT, Stefan Anker investigates the mechanisms of tissue metabolism leading to sarcopenia and cachexia in chronic diseases as well as cardio-oncological issues in patients with advanced tumor disease. The development of novel treatment concepts is in the foreground, on the one hand to avoid weight loss of the chronically ill with buildup of muscle and adipose tissue, and on the other hand to develop cardiological therapies for tumor patients.

Zachi Attia, PhD, is a co-director of Artificial Intelligence for Cardiovascular Medicine in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Attia joined the staff of Mayo Clinic in March 2018 and holds the academic rank of an assistant professor of medicine, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science.
Dr. Attia earned his M.Sc. and B.Sc summa cum laude in electrical engineering from Ben Gurion University in Israel and his PhD from the university of Minnesota.
As a co-director of Artificial Intelligence in Cardiovascular Medicine, Dr. Attia direct a team of AI research scientists and work with physicians to leverage our large digital vaults of stored ECGs, echocardiograms, stress tests, nuclear images, angiograms and other big data sets to develop new tools to advance the field and the care of people with heart disease.
Dr. Attia has experience in managing large medical digital data sets and preparing them for use by neural networks; with the design and architecture of many forms of neural networks including convolutional, recurrent, and generative networks; and working efficiently in a medical environment and closely with subject matter experts to create AI tools that produce medically meaningful outputs. He has six patent filings in the field of health monitoring and biomedical algorithms for disease detection and prediction. He has given presentations on his research both nationally and internationally and has authored journal articles, abstracts and other written publications. His work on detection of systolic dysfunction was presented in Nature Medicine, as part of the “Medicine in the Digital Age,” 25th anniversary special edition and his work on detection of atrial fibrillation from normal sinus rhythm in “Lancet”.
Dr. Attia is a member of the American Heart Association and the Heart Rhythm Society.

Dr. Ron Blankstein is the Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Program, Director of Cardiac Computed Tomography, and a preventative cardiology specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). In addition, he is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

Dr. Blankstein is the immediate Past-President of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Preventive Cardiology.   He received his medical degree from Rush Medical College. He completed an internal medicine residency and a cardiology fellowship at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Blankstein then completed an advanced fellowship in cardiac imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is certified in cardiovascular disease, nuclear cardiology, and cardiovascular computed tomography.

His clinical interests focus on methods to identify and treat early stages of coronary heart disease, prevention of cardiovascular disease, and diagnosis and treatment of cardiac sarcoidosis. Dr. Blankstein is an expert in the use of multi-modality imaging for the assessment of cardiovascular disease. This includes acquiring and interpreting non-invasive cardiovascular imaging tests—such as cardiac MRI, cardiac CT, nuclear cardiology, and exercise treadmill testing. The author of over 400 publications, Dr. Blankstein’s research compares the results of different imaging techniques as well as the impact of these tests on the patient management and outcomes. Dr. Blankstein frequently lectures on topics ranging from preventive cardiology and risk assessment to how to use the results of cardiovascular imaging in patient management decisions.

Associate Professor in Cardiology, Dept of Cardiac Thoracic Vascular Sciences and Public Health, University of Padova, Italy. Fulfilled National Scientific requirements for Full Cardiology Professor. Education:- Medicine and Surgery Degree (honours), and Specialist Diploma (honours) in Cardiology, Pisa University; Ph.D. in the Faculty of Medicine, St. George’s Hospital Medical School, University of London. Memberships/Committees: Italian Society of Cardiology-Member; ESC-Fellow; ANMCO-Fellow 2000; SIC -Nucleus Member 2008-2012 and SIC –Chair of the Working Group on: ” Myocardial and pericardial disease” 2010-2012; ESC-Nucleus Member and Treasurer of ESC Working Group on “Myocardial and Pericardial Diseases ” 2010-12 and Task Force on “Myocarditis”, Nucleus Coordinator, 2010-2012; ESC Chair, Working Group on “Myocardial and Pericardial Diseases ” 2014-16;ESC EORP)-Long-term cardiomyopathy and myocarditis (LT-CMY) Registry Chair 2018 and current. H-index 44 (scopus author ID 7005166754).

Danny Dvir has large experience in structural heart interventions. He is internationally recognized as an expert in evaluating and treating prosthetic heart valves, including valve-in-valve therapy, BASILICA and many others. Dr. Dvir worked extensively and specialized in non-invasive strategies for the treatment of heart valves in the Center for Heart Valve Innovation in Vancouver, BC and in University of Washington in Seattle. He is the president of the board of the Institute of Valvular Research.

Marc Gillinov, MD, is Chairman of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery in the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is board-certified by the American Board of Surgery and the American Board of Thoracic Surgery. He holds the Judith Dion Pyle Chair in Heart Valve Research.   He is also Chair of the NIH-funded Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network.   In addition, he is Surgical Director of the Center for Atrial Fibrillation at Cleveland Clinic.

In response to patients’ questions, Dr. Gillinov worked with Dr. Steven Nissen to write Heart 411: The Only Heart Guide You Will Ever Need. The goal of the book is to help people learn about heart health and live a heart-healthy lifestyle.

Specialty interests: Mitral valve repair, robotic mitral valve surgery, robotic heart surgery, aortic valve replacement, minimally invasive heart surgery, heart valve surgery, heart valve repair.

Number of Procedures Performed: Cleveland Clinic performs more than 4,000 heart surgeries each year. All Cleveland Clinic cardiac surgeons complete between 300-400 cardiac cases per year.  The majority of Dr. Gillinov’s procedures are heart valve procedures, especially mitral valve surgery. Dr. Gillinov performs more mitral valve surgeries each year than any other surgeon in the world.

Success Rates: Cleveland Clinic has been ranked the #1 hospital for cardiology and heart surgery by U.S. News & World Report since 1995.

Education and Training:  A Cleveland native and graduate of Hawken School, Dr. Gillinov first worked at Cleveland Clinic in 1978. After a close family member’s successful heart surgery at Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Gillinov became interested in learning more. He spent his summers during high school at Cleveland Clinic, working as a researcher and assistant in the cardiac surgery operating suite.

After graduating summa cum laude from Yale University, Dr. Gillinov entered Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he ranked first in his class. Dr. Gillinov received his clinical and advanced training in general surgery and cardiac and thoracic surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. After completing his education and training, he returned to Cleveland Clinic and joined the cardiac surgery staff in 1997.

Publications and Speaking: Dr. Gillinov is a recognized expert in mitral valve repair surgery, robotic heart surgery and in the study and treatment of patients with atrial fibrillation. He has been instrumental in the development of new, less invasive treatment approaches for patients with mitral valve disease and atrial fibrillation. He has been invited to give hundreds of lectures at hospitals, academic meetings and seminars in the United States and abroad.

Dr. Gillinov has written more than 400 publications, eight continuing medical educational films and contributed over 30 chapters to medical/surgical textbooks. He has been granted patents for several innovations, including a patent disclosing new techniques for valve repair for which he received a Cleveland Clinic Award for Innovation.

Dr. Gillinov is a current or past member of 10 scientific societies, and he has been invited to join the editorial review board or act as an editorial reviewer for 15 scientific periodicals. He is the medical editor of Cleveland Clinic’s Cardiac Consult, and has served on the editorial boards of e-Cleveland Clinic, The Heart Surgery Forum, Innovations, the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, and the Journal of Cardiac Surgery.

Edward T.A. Fry, MD, FACC, attended medical school at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and completed his residency in internal medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He completed a two-year cardiovascular research fellowship focused on pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics of native and genetically modified plasminogen activators. He also completed a general cardiology fellowship at Washington University, where he then served as assistant professor and medical director of the cardiac transplant program before completing an interventional cardiology fellowship at Ascension St. Vincent Hospital – Indianapolis.

In 1991, he joined the cardiology practice at St. Vincent where he continues to be a busy interventional and general cardiologist and serves as chair of the Ascension National Cardiovascular Service Line. He helped launch Navion Healthcare Solutions, a subsidiary data quality management software company owned by Ascension, where he previously served as board chair.

Dr. Fry is past president and governor of ACC’s Indiana Chapter. Within the ACC, he has served on the Audit and Compliance Committee (chair), Digital Strategy Steering Committee; Interventional Section Leadership Council; Surviving MI Initiative; Integrating the Health Enterprise Health Policy Work Group; Clinical Quality Committee; Prior Authorization Work Group; ACC Telemedicine Project; ACC COVID-19 Hub; Board of Governors Steering Committee; Innovations Development Work Group; ACC Premier Oversight Work Group (chair); Board of Trustees (BOT) Task Force on Clinician Well-Being; Health Systems Task Force; ACC/AHA Ethics and Professionalism Consensus Task Force, and ACC Nominating Committee. He has been a presenter, moderator and session chair at ACC Annual Scientific Session, ACC CV Summit, MedAxiom CV Transforum, Heart House Roundtables and is a member of HeartPAC, ACC’s political action committee.

Dipti Itchhaporia, MD, MACC, is an interventional cardiologist and the Eric & Sheila Samson Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Health, director of disease management for Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute, and associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. Dr. Itchhaporia completed her residency in internal medicine at Stanford Health Care, as well as fellowships in cardiology at Georgetown University Medical Center and in interventional cardiology at Stanford Health Care.

Dr. Itchhaporia’s professional interests include quality measurement and improvement and cardiovascular disease prevention in women. Most recently, she has focused on technology and innovations that can propel digital transformation and disrupt care delivery, ultimately improving the lives of clinicians and patients and helping achieve health equity. She has been the chair of ACC’s Task Force on Health Equity focusing on addressing issues of health disparities and social determinants of health and improving access to care for underserved patients.

As an educator, Dr. Itchhaporia is interested in increasing the global awareness of cardiovascular disease and promoting health equity. She has worked with the Public Health Foundation of India in capacity-building efforts to develop and update content for certificate courses in cardiovascular disease and stroke prevention. She has been involved with the Best of ACC program in China, which aims to educate cardiovascular professionals throughout the country. She was co-chair of the ACC Middle East Conference in 2019 and 2020 and is on the editorial board for ACC’s extended learning (ACCEL). She also serves on the editorial board of Cardiology Today magazine.

Dr. Itchhaporia served on ACC’s Board of Trustees, as secretary and chair of the Board of Governors, as well as president of ACC’s California Chapter. She went on to serve as vice president and president of the College. She also served on ACC’s Lifelong Learning Oversight Committee, Science and Quality Committee, Governance Committee, Practice Administrator Workgroup and the ACC Innovation Program. She also has held several leadership positions with the American Heart Association (AHA).

Dr. Itchhaporia is a fellow of the ACC, AHA and European Society of Cardiology, as well as an honorary member of the British Cardiovascular Society and the Indian College of Cardiology. She was named a Top Doctor by Orange Coast Magazine and has been recognized by the AHA as an Outstanding Medical Honoree.

Jonathon A. Leipsic, M.D., F.R.C.P.C. F.S.C.C.T is the Chairman of the Department of Radiology for Providence Health Care and the Vice Chairman of Research for the UBC Department of Radiology.  He is Professor of Radiology and Cardiology at the University of British Columbia.

Dr Leipsic is also a Canada Research Chair in Advanced Cardiopulmonary Imaging. He recently has taken on the role of Medical Imaging Regional Department Head of Vancouver Coastal Health. Dr. Leipsic has over 415 peer reviewed manuscripts in press or in print, over 300 scientific abstracts, and editor of 2 textbooks. He speaks internationally on a number of cardiopulmonary imaging topics with over 150 invited lectures in the last 4 years and is Past President of the Society of Cardiovascular CT the largest international society focused on cardiovascular CT.

Amir Lerman, MD. Is an endowed named Barbara Lips professor of medicine and a consultant in the department of cardiovascular disease at the Mayo graduate school of medicine. Dr. Lerman serves as an associate chair of the department of Cardiology and the Director of the cardiovascular research center at Mayo Clinic and the medical director of the chest pain and coronary physiology clinic. Dr. Lerman serves as the Director Mayo-Israeli start-up companies initiative and on the faculty member of the Merage Institute for medical innovation.  Dr. Lerman graduated from the Technion school of Medicine in Haifa Israel and completed his training in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases and invasive cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Leman interest is coronary physiology and imaging, regenerative medicine, innovative technologies and digital health. Dr. Lerman published more than 650 manuscripts, book chapters and reviews; the NIH, AHA, and several foundations support his research.

• Professor of Cardiology and Consultant Cardiologist at St. George’s Hospital NHS Trust University of London where he is also the Director of the MSc in Heart Failure.
• He received his medical degree and his specialisation in cardiovascular medicine from “La Sapienza” University of Rome in Italy, and his PhD in Medical Sciences from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London, UK.
• He is the President-Elect of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC.
• Served as member of the CVWP of the European Medicines Agency since July 2020, he has been board member of the Italian Space Agency and member of the pricing and reimbursement committee at the Italian Drug Agency.
• Fellow of several societies such as the European Society of Cardiology, the Heart Failure Association, the American College of Cardiology, and the Italian Federation of Cardiology.
• Serves as Editorial Board Member for European Heart Journal, European Journal of Heart Failure, European Heart Journal—Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, ESC Heart Failure, Cardiovascular Diabetology, Nature Research Scientific Reports, Cardiovascular Reviews, Advances in Therapy, European Cardiology Review, and Climacteric; he has authored or co-authored more than 500 peer-reviewed articles.

Iris Shai, RD, PhD, is a Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology at BGU in the field of nutrition and chronic diseases, Adjunct Professor at Harvard University & Honorary Professor in Leipzig University, Germany. Shai is the chair of the International center of Health Innovation& Nutrition, and a member in the Government Health Ministry Committee for healthy Nutrition Regulations in Israel.  Her focuses are obesity, diabetes, aging and cardiometabolic risk, while performing long-term, large scale, compressive dietary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in standards of drugs trials, and long-term cohorts. Following her fellowship, awarded with Fulbright, in Harvard School of Public Health, where she focused on traditional and non-traditional biomarkers for CVD,  she leaded, with her international research team, the  2-year Dietary Intervention Randomized Controlled Trial (DIRECT) and 4-year follow-up (A Dietary Intervention- Randomized Controlled Trial (DIRECT) Study), comparing the effects of dietary strategies on cardiometabolic risk and plaque regression. In her next trial , CASCADE (The CArdiovasCulAr Diabetes & Ethanol (CASCADE) Trial) she addressed the 2-year effect of moderate alcohol in type 2 diabetes and her recent whole-body MRI trial ,CENTRAL (Diet and Body Composition (CENTRAL)), focused on dynamic of human specific fat depots and fuel metabolism across dietary strategies. Recently, she completed the DIRECT PLUS trial (Effects of Green-MED Diet Via the Gut-fat-brain Axis (DIRECT-PLUS)), which explores the effect of green Med diet, high- polyphenols on the gut-fat-brain axis. In this trial new horizons were explored, related to Autologous Fecal Microbiota Transplantation, brain atrophy attenuation ad epi-genetics. The above-mentioned clinical trials serve in global nutritional guidelines in the field of obesity, cardiology, diabetes and fatty liver diseases. Currently, Shai directs the FIT project (Follow Intervention Trials) project which aims to identify predictors & drivers determining personal health outcome, as age-related brain atrophy; as an integration of four long-term, large scale dietary clinical trials. The FIT will leverage huge omics data bank from various human specimen, MRI scans and health outcomes toward personal medicine approach.

Chief, Department of Cardiology, Hôpital Bichat, Paris, France.

Vice President for research of the board of the Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris network.

Professor of Cardiology at Université Paris-Cité.

Chair of the FACT (French Alliance for cardiovascular Clinical Trials) academic research network.

Dr Steg has extensive experience as a clinical trialist in coronary artery disease and has authored > 1 700 peer-reviewed articles. His H-Index is 136 and he has > 76 000 citations. He has been ”highly cited researcher” every year since 2014. He is Senior Associate Editor for Circulation.

Dr. Bradley Strauss obtained his MD cum laude from the University of Toronto in 1982. He completed his Residency Training in Internal Medicine at the University of Toronto in 1986 and then in Cardiology at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute in 1988. With the support of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Dr. Strauss was a Research Fellow at the world-famous Thoraxcenter in Rotterdam, the Netherlands under the supervision of Professor Patrick Serruys. During his time in Rotterdam, he obtained a PhD from Erasmus University for his work on coronary stenting and the arterial response to stenting injury.

He recently completed a 10-year term as Chief of the Schulich Heart Program and Head of the Division of Cardiology at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Canada. He holds the Reichmann Chair in Cardiovascular Research, and is a Professor of Medicine and Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at the University of Toronto.

His main clinical activity is interventional cardiology. He has authored more than 200 papers and has served on the Editorial Board of 5 journals. He holds 13 patents. He has founded two start-up interventional companies, Matrizyme Pharma, and RBY Medical He is one of the co-Founders of the Medventions Innovation Program at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center. He is co-Director of the Canada-Israel Cardiovascular Innovation Forum, which was initiated in March 2021. Dr. Strauss has arranged and supervised the interventional fellowship training of 18 Israeli cardiologists.