Inspired Love in Action.

Dr. Itchhaporia is a board-certified interventional cardiologist. She is the Eric & Sheila Samson Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Health, the director of disease management for the Hoag Heart and Vascular Institute, and an associate clinical professor at the University of California, Irvine.

For the last 10 years, she has chaired the annual Cardiovascular Update Meeting held in Newport Beach, CA. Dr. Itchhaporia is on the editorial board for the American College of Cardiology’s extended learning as well as the Cardiology Today magazine.

Dr. Itchhaporia has held many other leadership positions including being on the board of the Western Affiliates Board of the American Heart Association and was the past president of the Orange County American Heart Association Chapter. She has also served on the National AHA’s Professional Educational Committee.

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Dr. Pinto currently is the Chief Medical Officer of JenaValve Technology and is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and served as the Chief of the Interventional Cardiology section at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He continues to perform complex coronary, structural and peripheral vascular procedures with and without circulatory assistance. Publishing over 100 original manuscripts, case reports, reviews, editorials and book chapters, Dr. Pinto pursues research interests in a wide variety of topics including outcomes studies and economic analyses for acute myocardial infarction studies, unstable angina studies, and numerous device trials for both the coronary and peripheral circulations. He serves as a manuscript reviewer for NEJM, JACC, Circulation, and others. He is on the editorial board of Circulation, CCI and JACC.

Dr. Khurram Nasir is the Chief of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention and Wellness; he serves as the Co-Director for the Center for Outcomes Research at Houston Methodist.

Dr. Michael J. Reardon is Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Allison Family Distinguished Chair of Cardiovascular Research, Senior Attending Surgeon at The Methodist Hospital, Senior Scientist at the Houston Methodist Research Institute and Surgical Director of Structural Heart Disease at the Houston Methodist Hospital. He also serves as Clinical Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. He has written over 700 medical and scientific papers, book chapters and abstracts, and frequently lectures on his research and clinical interests of cardiac valvular disease, thoracic aortic disease and cardiac tumors.

Dr. Neal S. Kleiman is Professor of Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, and is also the Medical Director of the cardiac catheterization laboratories and Program Director of the interventional cardiology fellowship at the Department of Cardiology at Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center of Houston Methodist Hospital. He is also Professor of Cardiology, Institute for Academic Medicine, Houston Methodist Institute for Academic Medicine, Houston Methodist Hospital.

Dr. Dharmakumar earned his Bachelor of Science in Physiology and Physics, Master of Science in Mathematics and PhD in Medical Biophysics from the University of Toronto. He received postdoctoral training in cardiovascular MRI at the University of Toronto and then at Northwestern University. In 2006, he joined the faculty in the Department of Radiology at Northwestern and was recruited to Cedars-Sinai in 2011 as Associate Professor. There, he held various leadership roles at the Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, including Associate Director, Director of translational cardiac imaging research and finally Co-director of PET/MRI research, a role he held since 2014. In 2018, he was promoted to Professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Cedars-Sinai, and Professor in Department of Medicine at UCLA.

In 2021, he was recruited to become the inaugural Executive Director of the Krannert Cardiovascular Research Center at Indiana University School of Medicine. Under his leadership, Krannert Cardiovascular Research Center aspires to create a research base that embraces all aspects of science, engineering and medicine to transform our current understanding of cardiovascular disease for developing novel diagnostics and therapeutics to displace heart disease as the leading cause of death. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the NIH has continually funded his work since his first appointment as faculty.

Salim S. Virani, MD, Ph.D., serves as the Vice Provost (Global Research) and The Nizar E. Noor Mohammed Mewawalla Endowed Professor at the Aga Khan University (AKU). Working with a dedicated team, he leads and facilitates AKU’s global research and international collaborations across South Asia, Europe, and East Africa in the areas of medicine, nursing, education, culture, media, climate change, and environmental sciences.

Prior to joining AKU, Dr. Virani was a tenured Professor in the Sections of Cardiology and Cardiovascular Research at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and an investigator in the Health Policy, Quality, and Informatics Program at the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center Health Services Research and Development Center of Innovation in Houston, TX. ​At BCM, he also served as the Director for the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship Training Program. His clinical practice includes being a Preventive Cardiologist with a special emphasis on management of complex dyslipidemias.

Samir Kapadia, MD, is the Chairman of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Kapadia is board-certified in internal medicine, cardiology, and interventional cardiology. Dr. Kapadia has published more than 800 articles and abstracts in professional scientific journals.

Dr. William A. Zoghbi is a leader in cardiology, nationally and internationally. He trained in cardiology at Baylor College of Medicine and Houston Methodist and has been on faculty since 1985. In 2005, he established the Cardiovascular Imaging Institute at Houston Methodist, a unique entity where all cardiovascular imaging modalities are integrated for enhanced patient care, education and research. In 2008 and 2012, he served as president of the American Society of Echocardiography and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), respectively.