Hypertension, Cardiology, Primary Health and Patient Care

Peter de Leeuw studied medicine at the Medical School (later: Erasmus University) in Rotterdam. After his graduation in 1974, he joined professor Willem Birkenhäger at the Zuiderziekenhuis in Rotterdam for his training in Internal Medicine. From 1975 he became involved in hypertension research and in 1978 he obtained his PhD degree for his thesis ‘Vasoregulation and renal function in essential hypertension’. Subsequently, he worked as a post-doc research fellow in the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital/Harvard Medical School under the supervision of professor Norman Hollenberg. Following several years of clinical practice in Rotterdam during which he continued his research he was appointed professor of Medicine at the University of Maastricht in 1991. Presently, he chairs the Division of Vascular Medicine at the University Hospital of Maastricht where he supervises 10 PhD students. Peter de Leeuw was President of the Dutch Society of Hypertension (1988-1996) and has served as a member of the Scientific Council of the International Society of Hypertension (1992-2000). He was and is on the Editorial Board of several journals in the field of hypertension and (general) internal medicine. Presently, he is Editor-in-Chief of the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde. He has been the Chairman of the Endpoint Committee of the Syst-Eur trial and member of the Steering Committee of the INSIGHT trial. He has also been involved in the organization of several meetings, amongst others as the Secretary for the 17th Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Hypertension which took place in Amsterdam in 1998. He also was a member of several scientific committees, e.g. those of the Dutch Heart Foundation, Dutch Kidney Foundation and ZonMW.

Hypertension, Nephrology

Pieter Doevendans became a cardiologist in Maastricht. In 1993-1994 he had the opportunity to work with Ken Chien at UCSD San Diego where the work on stem cells started. The work was completed in Maastricht and provided the basis for a thesis on the promoter of the atrialMLC gene. Upon return in the Netherlands he worked with Christine Mummery and Hans Clevers (Hubrecht Laboratory). In the meantime he remained active as an interventional cardiologist initially in Maastricht, but from 2002 on in Utrecht. Here he was appointed full professor in Cardiology in 2004 and head of the department in 2005. The focus is on Cardiac Failure, stem cells and genetics. He was funded by various national and international foundations. Thus far (2016) he published more than 650 peer reviewed papers and 12 books. He is an active member of the European Society of Cardiology where he performed various tasks

Cardiovascular disease: the regulation of cardiac gene expression, signaling in cardiac hypertrophy, the genetics of cardiovascular disease and stem cells to generate cardiomyocytes, and biological pacemaking.

Louis Peeters dedicated most of his scientific career to the study of maternal physiology in pregnancy and of the pathophysiology of hypertensive pregnancy disorders, both in animals and women. He started his career in 1974 with a fellowship in Fetal & Maternal Medicine at the Un. of Colorado, Denver. After his residency in Ob/Gyn. (1976-1981, Nijmegen, the Netherlands), he worked at the Dept. of Ob/Gyn., Erasmus Univ., Rotterdam and from 1987 at the Dept of Ob/Gyn, MUMC, Maastricht. In 1987 and 2001/2002, resp., he interrupted his work in the Netherlands for sabbaticals at Columbia Univ, New York City (Dept. Physiology) and UCSF, San Francisco (Dept. Ob/Gyn.). From 2011 he worked at the Dept. Ob., UMC Utrecht, to retire from clinical duties in 2013. Afterwards he continued his work in education and research. During his career he published over 150 scientific articles and over 20 book chapters.

Physiology of pregnancy, Pregnancy and maternal diseases (hypertension, renal, cardiovascular, metabolic, and autoimmune diseases)Repeated miscarriages.

Stamatios Lerakis is a Professor of Medicine and Radiology and Imaging Sciences in the Division of Cardiology at Emory University. He is Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University. He received his M.D. degree from the Medical School of Athens (Greece) in 1988. He continued on doing clinical research in Nuclear Cardiology in Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Subsequently, he did his Internal Medicine training in the Presbyterian Medical Center of Philadelphia from 1991 to 1994 and completed his Fellowship in Critical Care in Brown University from 1994 to 1995. He went on to complete his Cardiology Fellowship at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas from 1995 to 1998 and then did one year of Echocardiography Fellowship at Emory University from 1998 to 1999. After his Echocardiography Fellowship, he has stayed on as Faculty in the Division of Cardiology practicing clinical and non-invasive cardiology. Dr. Lerakis’ research interests are focused on non-invasive cardiology. He is especially interested in the correlation of different non-invasive modalities in the diagnosis of Coronary Artery Disease. He is interested in Endocarditis and is the primary investigator at Emory University of the International Collaboration of Endocarditis study. He is extremely interested in the use of Echocardiography for guiding interventional procedures, device deployment and Transcatheter Valvular therapies of Structural and Valvular Heart Disease. Dr. Lerakis is the Director of Imaging for the Emory Structural and Valve Heart Center and Director, Cardiac MRI in Emory University Hospital and Emory Clinic. He is also interested in the study of Valvular Heart Disease by Echo and cardiac MRI and novel therapies for acute myocardial infarction patients. Dr. Lerakis is extremely interest in using 3D Echo for the evaluation of the cardiac anatomy and function. Dr. Lerakis attends at Emory University Hospital and Emory Clinic. He spends a lot of time teaching cardiology fellows, cardiac anesthesia fellows and radiology residents, basic and cutting edge technologies of non-invasive cardiac imaging modalities. He has received multiple teaching awards from the fellows.

Valvular Heart Disease, Echocardiography,Cardiac MRI, non-invasive cardiac imaging

Bertram Pitt received his MD degree from the University of Basel in 1959. After a residency in medicine he worked at the Walter Reed Army Medical research Institute from 1963-1966. He completed a fellowship in cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and remained there on the faculty until 1977 when he joined the University Of Michigan School Of Medicine as director of the division of cardiology. He is currently professor of medicine emeritus, has published over 750 peer reviewed papers, and received life time achievement awards from the AHA and ESC-HF society.

Cardiovascular diseases, Ischemic heart disease, heart failure

Asher Kimchi, MD, is the clinical chief of the Division of Cardiology and co-medical director of the Preventive and Consultative Heart Center of Excellence at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. He holds the academic title of clinical professor of Medicine. He is also a past president of the Greater Los Angeles Affiliate of the American Heart Association. Kimchi, a former flight surgeon in the Israeli Air Force, is the founder and chair of the International Academy of Cardiology. He founded the World Congress on Heart Disease and has served as its chair for 26 years. Through the organization, he has directed 22 international congresses on heart failure and heart disease. He is an editor or co-editor of 12 books, and his scientific articles on the diagnosis and treatment of coronary artery disease and heart failure have appeared in prestigious peer-reviewed journals, including Circulation, the American Journal of Cardiology, JAMA Internal Medicine and the American Heart Journal. He has presented his scientific work at numerous national and international conferences. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Cardiology.

Arrhythmias (Irregular Heartbeat, Heart Rhythm Disorders), Hypertension, Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Coronary Artery Disease (CAD)and Preventive Cardiology

Jose Antonio F. Ramires, MD, PhD has completed his PhD at the age of 28 years from University of São Paulo Medical School, Brasil and postdoctoral studies from the same University. He was the Scientific Director, Learn Director and General Director of the Instituto do Coração-INCOR (Heart Institute) of the University of São Paulo. Actually, he is Head Professor of Cardiology of the Instituto do Coração-INCOR and coordinator of medical graduate of the INCOR. Dr. Ramires was President of the São Paulo State Cardiology Society, Brazilian Society of Cardiology and Brazilian Heart Foundation (FUNCOR) and Vice-President of the InterAmerican Cardiology Society. During five years (2005-2010) was President of the Professors and Researchers Evaluation Committee of the University of São Paulo. He has published more than 490 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of repute.

Myocardial infarction, Angioplasty, Coronary artery disease and Acute myocardial infarction.