Akiko Maehara

Dr. Maehara is the Director of the Intravascular Imaging Core Laboratory at the CRF Clinical Trials Center. She is also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. She is a leading authority in the field of intravascular imaging and physiology. Dr. Maehara received her medical degree from Yamaguchi University School of Medicine in Yamaguchi, Japan. She completed her cardiovascular fellowship at the Cardiovascular Center in Toranomon Hospital in Tokyo. Dr. Maehara finished a research fellowship at Stanford University and at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC.

Andrew Sharp

Dr Sharp qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in 1998. He was appointed as a Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital in 2011 and Honorary Associate Professor by the University of Exeter in 2018 before moving to the University Hospital of Wales in the summer of 2019. He conducted his early training at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, before moving to London for his senior clinical training. He completed the prestigious Milan-Imperial Interventional Cardiology Fellowship programme, having spent a year in San Raffaele and Columbus Hospitals, Milan, Italy, under the tutelage of Professor Antonio Colombo. He also spent three years training in interventional cardiology at St Mary’s Hospital and The Hammersmith Hospital (Imperial College Hospitals) in London. Dr Sharp was awarded an MD postgraduate research degree from the University of Edinburgh for his work on the hypertensive heart and led a large research programme at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital, which he is now establishing in Wales. He has been Principal Investigator in more than 30 ethically-approved research trials since 2012 and has published extensively. He has an international reputation for leading the development of device-based treatments for hypertension (in particular that of renal denervation) and pulmonary embolism, as well as the advancement of intracoronary imaging and physiology.

Bruce Samuels

Dr. Bruce Samuels is an interventional cardiologist on staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (CSMC) in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Samuels completed his medical studies at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York before returning to Southern California to complete his residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. At CSMC, he trained in both general and interventional cardiology before joining the medical staff there. In addition to his clinical practice in coronary intervention, Dr. Samuels has actively participated in numerous interventional trials including IVUS guided therapy, coronary physiology and microvascular disease. He is also working closely with the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center based at CSMC, working as an interventionalist in the active coronary reactivity research there. As co-chair of a 30-day readmissions task force, he has helped to shape policy for CSMC in its efforts to improve quality delivery of care. He has frequently been invited as faculty to many scientific meetings and is a sought after speaker for numerous peer educational platforms. Dr. Samuels is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, and Interventional Cardiology. He is married with three sons; his outside interests include contemporary art and long distance running.

Carlo Di Mario

Carlo Di Mario is Professor of Cardiology at the University of Florence and Director of the Structural 
Interventional Cardiology Division of the University Hospital Careggi, Florence, Italy. Previous posts included 15 years as Professor of Clinical Cardiology at Imperial College of Sciences, Medicine & Technology, London and Consultant Cardiologist at the Royal Brompton Hospital. Despite his teaching, research and administrative commitments, he maintains an active clinical involvement performing more than 100 PCI per year with special interest in the treatment of calcified lesions, chronic total occlusions, bifurcations, and diffuse disease. He is a regular TAVI operator and certified implanter for the Medtronic Evolut R and Edwards Sapien 3 transcatheter aortic valves. He participated in more than 160 MitraClip implantations in London and Florence and has recently started direct annuloplasty with the CardioBand. Professor Di Mario pioneered the use of intracoronary Doppler, pressure measurement, intravascular ultrasound, optical coherence tomography, and near infrared spectroscopy. He was PI of the OPTICUS trial, failing to demonstrate superiority of IVUS guided stenting, and of the Lipid Rich Plaque study, due to report at TCT 2018. He was Principal Investigator of the DESTINI trial, using Doppler CRF to identify lesions in need of stenting, and of the CARESS in AMI trial, a large multicentre trial showing that patients who receive fibrinolytic therapy for ST-elevation myocardial infarction benefit from early angioplasty. This trial and a subsequent meta-analysis have led to a change in the European Society of Cardiology and AHA/ACC Guidelines for treatment of STEMI patients. He cooperated with Dr Davies to the validation of iFR to assess lesion severity and discriminate the contribution of individual lesions, and with Dr Lyon in the intracoronary delivery of SERCA-2 genes via adenoviral vectors in the CUPID2 trial.

Christopher Cook

Dr Christopher Cook is a Medical Research Council Clinical Fellow at Imperial College London, undertaking a PhD in coronary physiology under the supervision of Dr Justin Davies. He studied Medicine at University College London (UCL) and graduated with Distinction (Clinical Medicine and Clinical Sciences) in his final MBBS Examinations in 2009. He achieved a First Class (Honours) Bachelor of Science degree in Physiology undertaking a period of research at The Hatter Cardiovascular Institute. He was awarded ‘The Dean’s List’ for outstanding performance in the Faculty of Life Sciences. In total he was awarded 17 prizes including the prestigious Gold Medal Medicine (proxime accessit). In 2014, he was awarded the Imperial Valve and Cardiovascular Course Young Investigator Prize. In 2015 he was awarded the inaugural EuroPCR’s Got Talent Award. In 2017 he was elected onto the EuroPCR Clinical Programme Committee.

Fausto Rigo

A consultant/attending at Hospital of Venice, Afghanistan. Features in 4 videos on Wondr Medical. Fausto Rigo generally speaks on Coronary Physiology, Coronary Flow Reserve (CFR), Echo, Dobutamine Stress Echo (DSE), and Stable Coronary Artery Disease (CAD).

Flavio Luciano Ribichini

Prof. Flavio L. Ribichini is Full Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Director of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine of the University of Verona, where he has served since 2006. Dedicated full time to Interventional Cardiology since 1993, he was Associate Professor of Cardiology and Director of the Catheterization Laboratory of the University Amedeo Avogadro in Novara, Italy from 2002 to 2006. He also worked as a full-time staff cardiologist at the Intensive Care Unit and the Catheterization Unit at Ospedale Santa Croce in Cuneo, Italy in the nineties. Prof. Ribichini obtained his medical degree in 1986 at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina, and then completed his fellowship in Internal Medicine in 1988. He obtained his board certification in Cardiology at the University of Torino, Italy in 1992. He had extensive training around the world in interventional cardiology, including at the University of Paris VII, Henry Mondor Hospital; Stanford University, California; and Mount Sinai Medical School, New York. In addition, he was a awarded a Research Fellowship of the ESC at the OLVZ Cardiovascular Centre, Aalst, Belgium. Prof. Ribichini is the Director of the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and the President of the PhD Department of the University of Verona. He is member of the Editorial Board of the European Heart Journal, member of the Executive Board of the European Association of Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI), member ESC Guidelines Task Force, and of the of the scientific committee of the Euro-PCR and the TCT. He is Coordinator, Principle Investigator, and member of the steering committees of several clinical trials and has authored over 300 full publications on clinical and basic cardiovascular research in peer reviewed scientific journals available on PubMed with an H index: 42.

Jan Piek

Dr Jan Piek is a clinical academic and interventional cardiologist at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers at the University of Amsterdam. At the moment, he has a full-time position as a professor of clinical cardiology at the AMC Heart Center in Amsterdam. His particular interest is interventional cardiology in which field he has been active for almost 30 years. In his academic position, he has supervised approximately 55 PhD students on the theme diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease. The topic of his research work focusses on translational aspects of coronary atherosclerosis. This started in the area of arteriogenesis after the completion of his thesis in 1992 followed by a close collaboration with the research group of Prof. Wolfgang Schaper from Bad Nauheim in Germany. In the same period, he started pioneering with the company Cardiometris, Mountain View, Ca, USA, that finally led the development of guidewires, equipped with pressure and Doppler sensors, as a technical refinement for guidance of coronary interventions. Moreover, subsequent studies performed on reperfusion injury with dedicated centers in the US and Germany, provided novel insights into the inflammatory response following acute myocardial infarction. His pioneering work on coronary hemodynamics led to creation of an international network of specialized centers. The DEFINE FLOW study involves a collaboration between Texas Heart Institute and the Amsterdam University Medical Center on combined pressure and flow measurements and was conducted in 12 sites worldwide. The last three years, he has worked as the editor in chief of the Netherlands Heart Journal.

Jasvindar Singh

Dr. Singh is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Medical Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Director of Interventional Cardiology. He specializes in coronary and peripheral vascular interventional procedures and spends most of his time in the cardiac catheterization laboratory. His expertise is in complex coronary intervention and also the endovascular treatment of renovascular hypertension, and peripheral arterial occlusive diseases. In addition, he has been involved in research ranging from new coronary devices to intravascular ultrasound and pressure/flow assessment of coronary vessels. He is the Principal Investigator in several high profile multicenter trials evaluating the above. He is actively involved in resident/fellow education and rotate in the coronary care unit twice a year. He has two interventional fellows per year who work closely with him during their training, he also serves as their attending in ½ day in patient clinic. He has second and third year cardiology fellows involved in clinical research protocols in the cath lab and their work has produced three instrumental abstracts/papers which in the first 12 months were presented at major cardiovascular society meetings. Dr. Singh is also the Chairman of ARCH, one of the largest Midwest Interventional Symposium.

Javier Escaned

Prof Javier Escaned is Head of Interventional Cardiology Section at Hospital Clinico San Carlos (Madrid, Spain). He trained as a cardiologist the United Kingdom before moving to the Thoraxcenter / Rotterdam (The Netherlands), where he obtained his PhD degree in 1994. A skilled interventionalist with over 30 years of experience, he regularly serves as live case operator and educationalist in global events like EuroPCR, TCT or the ESC Congress. He is author of over 400 PubMed indexed scientific articles (h-index 67) on topics that include complex PCI in multivessel disease (principal investigator of SYNTAX II study), left main and chronic total occlusions, and secondary revascularization. His track record in coronary physiology includes being investigator on pivotal FFR trials like DEFER (1998), collaborator with Justin Davies in the validation and clinical implementation of iFR (since 2010), and developer of new methods for the assessment of microvascular and non-obstructive coronary disease. Recent / ongoing trials as Co-PI include ADVISE, ADVISE II, DEFINE FLAIR and ABSORB II PHYSIOLOGY, being investigator also in ILUMIEN I and IV, COMBINE and other studies on coronary imaging. He is currently Deputy Editor for Interventional Cardiology of the European Heart Journal, as well as editor of two large textbooks: “Coronary Stenosis. Imaging, Structure and Physiology”, (co-editor Patrick Serruys) and “Physiological Assessment of Coronary Stenoses and the Microcirculation) (co-editor Justin Davies). Current or recent board positions in scientific societies include EuroPCR, EAPCI, EuroCTO and the ESC Working Group of Coronary Pathophysiology and Microcirculation. Some of his additional interests are philosophy, education and music.

Justin Davies

Dr Justin Davies is founder and CEO of Wondr Medical, inventor of IFR, and clinical academic and consultant interventional cardiologist at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

Karim Al-Azizi

A professor at Baylor Scott & White Health, The Heart Hospital Plano, United States of America. Features in 11 videos on Wondr Medical. Karim Al-Azizi generally speaks on Instantaneous wave-Free Ratio (iFR), Co-registration, Fractional Flow Reserve (FFR), Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS), and Live Cases.

Nieves Gonzalo

Dr Nieves Gonzalo is Consultant Interventional Cardiologist at the Interventional Cardiology Department at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid. She obtained her Specialist Certification in Cardiology after training at Clinico San Carlos University Hospital in Madrid. Subsequently, she underwent a research fellowship at Thoraxcenter, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands) under the supervision of Professor Patrick Serruys, focused mainly in intracoronary imaging and bioabsorbable stents. In 2010 she obtained her PhD with the thesis “Optical coherence tomography for the assessment of coronary atherosclerosis and vessel response after stent implantation”. Her track record includes over 170 articles indexed in PubMed, as well as book chapters in Interventional Cardiology textbooks. Recent research projects as principal investigator includes a study about the assessment of neoatherosclerosis and its clinical impact in patients with restenosis (RIBS IV and V OCT substudy) and research regarding vessel injury and healing evaluation with different stent platforms evaluated with OCT (VISTA study). Dr Gonzalo is a dedicated educationalist with involvement in many areas of complex PCI, serving currently as Deputy Editor for Eurointervention and Committee Member of EuroPCR.

Rajesh Kharbanda

Professor Rajesh Kharbanda is a Consultant Cardiologist Oxford University Hospitals, UK with over 20 years of experience in treating patients with a wide range of heart conditions including angina, valve disease, heart failure and irregular heart rhythm. He has special expertise in the treatment of coronary artery disease by coronary angioplasty and stenting including complex angioplasty techniques as well as Structural Heart interventions. He has published and co-authored over 240 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals and actively involved in international trials evaluating various coronary and transcatheter valve technologies.

Ricardo Petraco

Dr Ricardo Petraco is a NIHR Lecturer in interventional Cardiology at Imperial College London, performing his clinical work at Hammersmith Hospital. He has been working with coronary physiology at Imperial since 2010 on the development of the novel instantaneous wave-Free Ratio (iFR). Dr Petraco’s work with iFR has led to the proposition of the Hybrid iFR-FFR approach and has established iFR’s close relationship with coronary flow reserve (CFR). His interests in computer programming has led to the development of a software for automated analysis of coronary haemodynamics signals which is been used by many leading centres in the world. He has also pioneered the algorithm for iFR calculation without the need for an ECG signal, an approach which is now implemented in clinical consoles. He has secured several research grants and published extensively in the field of coronary physiology. His current research interests are on the development of methodologies to assess stenosis severity in situations of haemodynamic instability and on the understanding of how medical therapies modulate coronary resistance and flow. Clinically, his interests also include the use of intravascular imaging modalities to optimise PCI and has been engaged in IVUS training for cathlab staff and cardiology trainees.

Roberto Spina

Dr Roberto Spina is an Interventional Cardiologist trained in Australia and the USA and is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He specialises in transcatheter structural heart interventions, having undertaken a Structural Heart Intervention Advanced Fellowship at the New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center in New York, USA.

Sukh Nijjer

Dr. Nijjer is a Consultant Cardiologist and Senior Clinical Lecturer at Imperial College London. He works at both the Hammersmith Hospital and Chelsea & Westminster Foundation NHS Trust, as well as leading private Hospitals in London including the Wellington and Cromwell Hospitals. He is the President-elect of the Cardiology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, and he was selected as an Emerging Leader for the British Cardiovascular Society. He specialises in coronary intervention and focused his clinical practice in the management of ischaemic heart disease. His practice encompasses all aspects of cardiology. In his PhD research, funded by the Medical Research Council (UK) and awarded by Imperial College he developed of new intracoronary physiology techniques, specifically iFR and iFR-pullback and Co-registration. He has published almost 100 peer-reviewed papers in respected journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. He has also written several books.