CARDIOLOGYMEET2024

Maria Paola LIA is a senior executive with over 15 years’ experience in establishing and nurturing strategic global health partnerships with government agencies, international organizations, and NGOs globally. She started her professional training and career in the Public Sector, working for the Italian Permanent Representations in France and Belgium, the Council of the European Union in Brussels, and the Italian Parliament in Rome. She gained further experience in the NGO sector as the elected Secretary General of FYEG. Maria Paola spent seven years working for the Lilly Global Health programs, a $30 million initiative established as a Global Public-Private Partnership with the aim of strengthening healthcare systems and supporting health policies through innovative approaches and advocacy. She currently supports several organizations by serving on their Boards, such as the IWG of the Italian Chamber of Commerce for Switzerland, Maison Kultura. Maria Paola holds a master’s degree in international relations and a PGC in Global Health Policy from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. As of September 2023, Maria Paola is the Executive Director of GAHP (Global Alliance on Health and Pollution), placing her two main interests at the core of her professional activities: the interconnectedness of environmental and health issues on a global scale.

Born in Greece. Diploma in Medicine (Greece, 1985). Specialist in Cardiology (Greek Board, 1991). CMR training at Royal Brompton Hospital (London, 1991-1993). CMR sabbatical at University of Alabama at Birmingham (1993). Married with an endocrinologist and mother of a 26 yrs old boy, graduated of Medical School of Groeningen University, the Netherlands, currently working on a PhD thesis regarding “Immunology in heart failure” Member of AHA Cardiovascular Radiology council (1996), SCMR (1998, founding member number 7)) and ESC CMR WG (1999). European Diploma in Cardiology (2000). Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC, 2000). CMR Credentialing (Level 3) by SCMR (2003). CMR Credentialing (European exams) by EUROCMR (2003). Reviewer for several journals, including JCMR (2001), Stroke (2003), CAIM (2005), Eur Heart J (2007), JMRI (2008), JACC (2007), Circulation (2007), Arthritis Care and Research (2008), Annals of Internal Medicine (2008). Founder and 1 st President of the Greek CMR WG (1999-2002) and of the Greek College of CMR Clinical applications (2013). Nucleus member of the European Society of Cardiology CMR WG, responisible for CMR education topics (2004-2008). Elected Chair for “Women in CMR” WG of SCMR 2017. Current position: Cardiologist at Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center (Athens) and Olympic Diagnostic, Piraeus in charge for CMR teaching, routine scans and research activities.Visiting Professor of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in National and KapodistrianUniversity of Athens,Athens, Greece and University of Padova, Italy Organizer of the annual ATHENSCMR level 1-2 course in Athens (from 2000 until now), accredited by EBAC and endorsed by SCMR /EuroCMR. Founder of the SCMR working group of Cardio-Rheumatology. Currently, I am preparing a SCMR position paper on « CMR in Rheumatology ». Research interests include non-ischemic cardiomyopathy and specifically CMR in Internal Medicine (Thalassemia, Dystrophinopathies, myocarditis and rheumatic diseases). Director of the outpatient clinic for Rheumatic, Neuromuscular and other Rare diseases at Onassis Hospital (referral center of Greece). Published over 300 original articles and authored chapters in several books related to cardiovascular imaging and CMR. Currently, I am preparing a book about “CMR for the Clinicians”. My main targets are: a) to promote collaboration/interaction between people of different specialties regarding CMR development internationally b) to interact with people from other imaging modalities c) to promote the application of CMR in Internal Medicine, Neurology, Pediatrics d) to bring CMR close to clinicians e) to promote CMR research in Cardio-Rheumatology. Other interests: Dance, cooking, drawing, swimming and accordion playing My moto is “Transform crisis into inspiration”

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Will be updated soon..!

Dipak Ramji is Professor of Cardiovascular Science and Deputy Head of the School of Biosciences at Cardiff University. He is also Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. He received his BSc (Hons) degree (Biochemistry) and his PhD (Molecular Biology) from the University of Leeds. This was followed by post-doctoral research at EMBL (Heidelberg) and IRBM (Rome) with fellowships from the Royal Society and the EU. His current research is focused on understanding how natural products regulate cellular processes in heart disease and other inflammatory disorders with the goal of attaining deeper mechanistic insight and identifying preventative/therapeutic agents. He has published over 150 research articles (h index 43 and i10 index 78 with over 8860 citations), including 880-page book in 2022 on Methods in Atherosclerosis. He is an Editorial Board member of many international journals, member of the British Heart Foundation Project Grants Committee, external examiner of taught programmes at three universities and has supervised 27 PhD students to completion.

Daniel Lichtenstein (intensive care, Ambroise Paré hospital, Paris) defined in 1991 critical ultrasound: for the critically ill, by the critical physician, whole body, i.e., a holistic approach centered around the lung (simplifying echocardiography on occasion). Some articles: BLUE-protocol (Chest). FALLS-protocol (Chest). Current misconceptions in lung ultrasound (Chest). Six textbooks (Springer). And my tentative title is`: ”Lung ultrasound for diagnosing hemodynamic pulmonary edema. The BLUE-protocol, a holistic approach simplifying echocardiography”. If too long, tell me.

Dr. George S. Abela is a clinician-scientist with expertise in atherosclerosis. He was trained in pharmacology, pathology, electron microscopy and is a clinical cardiologist. At Harvard he initiated a program evaluating plaque rupture and at MSU his lab discovereda mechanism of plaque rupture by expanding cholesterol crystals (CCs). This discovery was achieved by avoiding ethanol dehydration during tissue processing. This mechanism was confirmed in human coronary arteries where CCs were found perforating plaque caps of patients who died of myocardial infarction. In collaboration with agroup in Germany they reported in Nature the role of CCs in triggering inflammation via NLRP3 inflammasome. Because of shared risk factors between atherosclerosis and cancer, he demonstrated extensive presence of CCs in 11 different cancers perforating the tumors as in atherosclerosis that potentially leads to local spread and metastasis. A similar mechanism was recently reported in diabetic retinopathy. These findings define a universal process of injury in many disease conditions.

The overall objective of my research is to provide and disseminate new knowledge regarding the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying genetic causes of cardiac disease by genetic sequencing of patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), other arrhythmia diseases or cardiomyopathies. As an example of our translational research in AF, I would like to mention our nationwide AF sequencing project. In this project, we have taken advantage of the Danish national registers to identify all families affected by AF at a nationwide scale. We have sequenced all protein coding genes in these families and showed that loss of function variants in the TTN gene strongly predispose for AF. We published the novel finding that these variants had large effect size and this gave us a unique opportunity to study the effect of these variants in CRISPR/Cas9 modified zebrafish. These studies indicated that increased fibrosis and sarcomere defect as an important pathophysiological pathway

Dr. Jinhong Wei is a Professor of the School of Medicine at Northwest University(China).His current research project focuses on investigating the roles of ryanodine receptors and inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate receptors in heart diseases.He received postdoctoral research training in the laboratory of Dr. SR Wayne Chen at the University of Calgary (Canada). He earned a PhD in Biophysics from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China. Dr. Wei has gained extensive experience in cellular and intact heart calcium imaging using genetically modified animal models. Outside of science, Dr. Wei enjoys spending time with his family, his daughter and son.

Dr. Okechukwu Ogah is a Senior Lecturer at Department of Medicine, University of Ibadan /University College Hospital Ibadan, Nigeria. He is also Bernard Lown visiting scholar at the TH Chan Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, USA. His areas of interest include Clinical Medicine/ Cardiology. He was a former President of the Nigerian Cardiac Society/ principal investigator/ coordinator in many national and continental cardiovascular research projects. He chairs the scientific committee of the Nigerian cardiac society. He has over 180 publications inlocal and international peer review journals.