Speakers

Shrilla Banerjee is Consultant Cardiologist with a special interest in Intervention. She trained at the University of Birmingham and then completed postgraduate training in London, with General Medical training on the St George's Medical rotation, followed by posts at Guys Renal Unit. Her Cardiology training was completed at UCLH, the Royal Free Hospital, the London Chest Hospital and the Middlesex Hospital.

Her MD was in Cardiovascular Epidemiology (University of London) and papers from it were published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s foremost medical journal.

In addition, she has co-authored a popular and well-received textbook of Cardiology, Swanton’s Cardiology. She maintains a keen research interest being Principal Investigator of the Remote Ischaemic Preconditioning Study here at Surrey and Sussex, a study in collaboration with the Hatter Institute of UCLH.

She has sessions for angiography, angioplasty and pacing here at SASH and also at UCLH. She maintains an interest in general cardiology including coronary artery disease, hypertension, cardiac arrhythmias and women's cardiac health.

Dr Stuart Rosen received his medical undergraduate education at Pembroke College, Cambridge and at Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School. His specialist cardiology training was at Charing Cross, Hammersmith and St Mary’s hospitals.

At Royal Brompton Hospital, Dr Rosen is a consultant cardiologist, and Professor of Practice in cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London.

Dr Rosen has specialist expertise in heart failure, syncope and difficult hypertension. His technical skills include transoesophageal echocardiography, stress echo, tilt testing and autonomic assessment, as well as ultrafiltration for decompensated heart failure.

He set up the cardio-oncology unit at Royal Brompton Hospital with Dr Alexander Lyon and Dr Rakesh Sharma. The unit provides bespoke care for patients at risk of cardiotoxicity or who have developed cardiac problems as a consequence of their anti-cancer treatment.

Prof Coats is Editor-in-Chief of the Cardiac Failure Review journal. He has published more than 750 full research papers and has more than 140,000 career citations and has a personal H-index of 151. Andrew was elected to the Presidential Trio of the Heart Failure Association of the ESC in 2018 and served as its president from 2020-2022.

Prof Coats is a past-Professor of Cardiology and Academic Vice-President of the University of Warwick, UK. He has also held posts as Head of Cardiology at Imperial College, London and Associate Medical Director and Director of Cardiology at the Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals, London. He also served as Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Dean of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

He is an Australian-British academic cardiologist as well as a successful fundraiser, university administrator and inventor. Prof Coats' main interest is heart failure and his current position is Scientific Director and CVE at the Heart Research Institute, Australia.

Mr Barnard is a Consultant Cardiac and Cardiothoracic Transplant surgeon who has worked as a Consultant Surgeon at Wythenshawe Hospital (Manchester University Foundation NHS Trust) since 2013. He qualified in medicine from St Andrews and Manchester Universities in 1998 and went on to undertake his basic surgical training at Manchester Royal Infirmary and the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.

Mr Barnard undertook his specialist training in Cardiothoracic Surgery in Manchester and Cambridge and in 2012 he undertook an advanced fellowship as the National Fellow in Heart & Lung Transplantation at Papworth Hospital near Cambridge. Mr Barnard performs the full range of adult cardiac surgery procedures including coronary artery bypass graft surgery and his areas of specialist interest are mitral valve repair surgery, major aortic surgery, surgery for infective endocarditis, redo cardiac surgery and Heart Transplantation and Lung Transplant surgery.

Dr Rebecca Dobson is a Consultant Cardiologist at the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital, in Liverpool, UK. She has a special interest in imaging and cardio-oncology.

Dr Dobson's research interests include cardio-oncology, cardiac imaging and advanced echocardiography, including chemotherapy-induced left ventricular systolic dysfunction, cardiac disease in cancer patients, carcinoid heart disease and heart valve disease.

Dr Dobson is a member of the British Cardiovascular Society, the British Cardio-Oncology Society, the British Society of Echocardiography and the Royal College of Physicians.

Dr Rebecca Dobson is Section Editor of European Cardiology Review.

Dr Matthew Kahn is a consultant cardiologist (with a specialist interest in Heart Failure and Complex Device Therapy) at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital. He is the Cheshire & Mersey Network Lead for Heart Failure and leads the award winning ‘Primary Care Heart Failure Service’ which promotes optimal outcomes for patients with Heart Failure in the community.

Amitava Banerjee is Professor in Clinical Data Science at University College London, and Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at University College London Hospitals and Barts Health NHS Trusts. Also, he is Vice-President (Digital, Communications and Marketing) of the British Cardiovascular Society and Senior Advisor to the World Heart Federation Emerging Leaders Programme.

As a researcher, educator and clinician, his interests span data science, cardiovascular disease, global health, training and evidence-based healthcare. He has been active both clinically and academically throughout the pandemic, and is leading a large, national Long Covid study (STIMULATE-ICP), which includes a large platform drug trial. He has published over 260 scientific papers with an H-index of 71.

His clinical work very much informs his research and vice versa, whether in the evaluation of technology, research in cardiovascular disease in under-served populations, electronic health records or COVID-19.

Professor Michael Henein is a Consultant Cardiologist based at The Harley Street Clinic, offering all aspects of general cardiology  and echocardiography,  including transthoracic, stress and transoesophageal echo as well as carotid scanning, with broad experience in cardiac CT scans.

Following 15 years at the Royal Brompton Hospital, he  spent the last 5 years in his capacity as Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London, leading  the Echocardiography Department at the Royal Brompton Hospital as Consultant in Cardiology and Echocardiography between 2001 and 2006.  Following that, Michael Henein accepted the role of OverLakare and Hon. Professor at Umea University as part time, along with a professorship at Canterbury Christ Church University (CCCU), Kent, UK. At CCCU he established an MSc course in cardiology, having tutored and graduated 100 students with quality MSc theses. This was followed by his formal appointment as the Professor of Cardiology at Umea University and Heart Centre. These positions provided unique opportunities to establish a number of research projects and programs which lead to 21 PhD theses completed (17 principle supervisor), and others on the way, with most students from abroad; UK, Ireland, Kosovo, Greece, Italy, Nigeria, Egypt and China. All graduated students are currently holding important clinical and academic positions.

Currently the most active projects Michael Henein's Team is working on are coronary calcification, heart failure and valvular heart disease. In addition, the academic environment and scientific collaboration between departments within Umea University assisted him in publishing over 430 papers in peer reviewed journals, writing and editing 6 textbooks and many chapters, 2 of them in Oxford Textbook of Medicine, pericardial diseases and valvular heart diseases.

Finally, he is also a Guest Editor to a number of journals including International Journal of Molecular Sciences, the Journal of Diagnostics, Journal of Clinical Medicine and Frontier of Cardiovascular Medicine.

Dr Chakrabarty is passionately engaged with Cardiology practice for many years. With his multiple international qualifications and specialist experience from many countries around the world including south east Asia, central Europe, USA and number of major centres of excellence university teaching hospitals from north to south in the UK, he is an internationally recognised Cardiologist and Heart Specialist.

He received double specialist accreditation and double specialist certification of the general medical council (GMC) of the UK and abroad.

Dr Chakrabarty worked as a specialist Consultant and Heart Specialist in many renowned university teaching hospitals in the UK, including Guys and St Thomas' hospital London, Kings college hospital London, St Bartholomew's hospital London, St George's hospital London, Papworth Heart hospital, Cambridge University, and recently Edinburgh Royal Infirmary University hospital. He remained a senior university lecturer, teacher, trainer, supervisor, educator and also clinical examiner at multiple teaching hospitals university medical schools throughout the UK and abroad.

Dr Chakrabarty has extensive educational, academic and research accomplishments and published number of scientific and clinical research papers and presented in numerous academic and scientific seminars, congresses and conferences world wide. With his wide experience in academic, research and clinical achievements he had been awarded with number of prestigious fellowship awards, apart from his double masters and double doctorate qualifications, including European Board Cardiologist specialist (EBSC), Fellow of European cardiac society (FESC) and also Fellow of American College of Cardiology (FACC) USA.

Dr Chakrabarty also holds a number of senior advisory positions in various medical executive boards, Scientific peer review boards, Clinical leadership panel, clinical advisory panels, such as National institute of clinical excellence, Royal college of physicians journals, British medical association, London leadership academy, and many national and international medical charity organisations.

Dr Chakrabarty believes, medicine is for dedication in life for the services of the humanity. There is no greater achievement than to help a sick, save a life and bring a smile to a patient’s face.

Kazem Rahimi is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Population Health, at the University of Oxford and a consultant cardiologist at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. His research interests include hypertension, heart failure, multimorbidity and cardiovascular risk management, using a variety of methodologies such as individual-patient meta-analysis, large-scale decentralised clinical trials, and digital health technologies. Kazem leads the Deep Medicine programme at the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health with a major interest in application of machine learning approaches to electronic health records. He also leads the Blood Pressure Lowering Treatment Trialists’ Collaboration (BPLTTC), which is an international collaboration of all the major trials of blood pressure lowering drugs. He is the co-founder of Zeesta (www.zeesta.ai), an end-to-end digital platform for conduct of clinical trials

I am a Consultant Cardiologist, Western Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland. My subspecialist is preventive cardiology. I moved to Northern Ireland in 2017 as I am a single parent and after having twins in 2014 I wanted to be closer to my family. Prior to that I had been a consultant in Imperial College Healthcare Trust for 13 years where I had led the Imperial Programme for Cardiovascular Health. I was fortunate when I moved to the WHSCT to secure funding that means I was able to set up a similar programme here. The programme is based on research I carried out in Imperial College providing comprehensive evidence-based care to patients with established cardiovascular disease or those who are at high multifactorial risk. As the clinical lead for the programme it is very satisfying to see the results that we achieve in terms of helping patients achieve healthy lifestyle change, better control of their blood pressure and cholesterol as well as improving their psychological health.

With COVID we rapidly transformed the programme to a virtual platform which has been really exciting to do and I am now a complete convert to digital health.

I am also level 2 accredited in cardiac CT which I started doing when I moved to the WHSCT and it marries very well with my subspecialist interest. Being able to show patients their images facilitates very useful conversations about lifestyle change and risk reduction in clinic. I am now involved in the NI Taskforce for CVD Prevention which was initiated by BHF NI and our ambition is to transform preventive cardiology services in NI which is very exciting.

Although my job is a busy one it is very enjoyable and what makes it possible as a single parent is good childcare and a support network that I have established. I am also able to do things like the school run every morning as the commute is so short (unlike in London!) and that really helps in terms of seeing the other parents and touching base with teachers if needed. Weekends are spent walking in the beautiful lakelands of Fermanagh (known as Northern Irelands lake District!) with the twins and our border collie Harry. I also like to cook and am about to start a kitchen renovation and so I fall asleep at night at the moment amidst a pile of interior design magazines. If I had to start over I would make the same career choices again. Yes it has been certainly challenging at times but having good mentors (male and female) along the way really helped and I think I have found a balance that works for me.

Dr Jen Peal is a Consultant Cardiologist specialising in heart failure and devices, with a major interest in device infection and extraction. She has been working as a Consultant Cardiologist at the Freeman Hospital, Newcastle since 2021.

Biochemist by training - Permanent Professor of the Autonomous University of Madrid and Vice-Dean of Postgraduate Studies of the Faculty of Medicine. - Directs a basic research group at the Hospital Fundación Jiménez Díaz (Madrid) analyzing mainly the deleterious effects of diabetes on the heart. In addition, he collaborates with Prof. José Tuñón, from the same University, in the search for key circulating biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of cardiovascular diseases.

Dr Alessandro Mengozzi is an Internal Medicine specialist, currently a Research Fellow at the University of Pisa and a PhD student at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies. During his medical specialty he became fascinated by cardiometabolic disease, focusing on the early stages of damage. Consequently, he began the exploration of the human microcirculation and its central role in the health-to-disease transition under the mentorship of Agostino Virdis and Stefano Masi. He will soon move to Zurich to complete his PhD, supervised by Francesco Paneni and Sarah Costantino. Outside of research, he is an all-round music lover and an insatiable reader.

Dr Narain works as Hon.Heart Failure Cardiologist at St. Georges University Hospital, London with special interest in Heart Failure & Cardio Metabolic Diseases. He did his MRCP from the Royal College of Physicians of London. He has set up UK's first Cardio Metabolic Clinic at St Georges Hospital, London. He is the founder and Director of Global Health Alliance, UK, which is consortium of leading Universities & Hospitals of UK in training healthcare workforce globally. Dr Narain is a member of the EAPCI, EAPCR, and Council for Myo/Pericardial Diseases.

He has lead MRCP exam teaching programmes at various UK hospitals. He also set up India’s first Royal College of Physicians, London, endorsed MRCP PACES Course. He is also Advisor to many Government around the world including India,UK, Ukraine & Ireland. He has presented papers at several National & International Conferences. He has his credit publications & research projects in Cardiology which have been published in different medical journals.

Zaheer was appointed consultant cardiologist at the University Hospital of Wales in 2005 where he leads the advanced heart failure and cardiomyopathy programme for South East Wales acting as a referral centre for heart muscle diseases, pulmonary hypertension, metabolic cardiomyopathies, neuro-muscular cardiomyopathies, chemotherapy-cardiomyopathies, and structural inherited cardiac conditions. He has implanted >3,000 biventricular pacing devices, performed >5,000 angiograms/right heart studies, and >150 endocardial cardiac biopsies.

Throughout his career he has maintained an academic interest, and to date has supervised 7 MD/PhD fellows and has served as the principal investigator in >35 multi-centre clinical trials, including acting as the UK chief investigator in >5 studies. He has generated academic funds in excess of £1million, authored >100 high impact publications, including co-authorship of manuscripts in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British medical Journal. He was awarded an honorary chair at Cardiff University in 2018.