Workshop programme

Konstantin Krychtiuk

Austria

Konstantin Krychtiuk, MD, PhD, is a specialist in internal medicine and cardiology at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, where he currently serves as an associate professor and faculty member. His main research and clinical interests are acute and critical care cardiology as well as primary and secondary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. After graduating from medical school, he enrolled in the Vascular Biology PhD Program in Vienna, where he focused on circulating inflammatory biomarkers and inflammatory processes in stable and acute and cardiac care. During clinical training, his research and clinical interest shifted towards optimizing primary and secondary prevention strategies, he is currently co-director of the cardiovascular lipid outpatient clinic and serves in several ESC appointed committees including the secondary prevention after ACS taskforce of the Association for Acute Cardiovascular Care.
In 2021 he joined the Duke Clinical Research Institute for a two-year fellowship in clinical cardiovascular research, during which he was exposed to a variety of research methodologies and datasets. Upon his return he joined faculty at the Division of Cardiology at the Medical University of Vienna with an ongoing focus on critical care cardiology and secondary prevention.

Edward Nicol

UK

Gp Capt Ed Nicol MStJ KHS MD MBA DAvMed FRCP FRCR FACC FRAeS MSCCT RAF is a consultant cardiologist who works at the Royal Brompton and Chelsea & Westminster Hospitals. He is the Defence Medical Services Deputy Medical Director and a Professor of Cardiovascular Imaging at King’s College, London. He is a King’s Honorary Surgeon, a member of the Venerable Order of St John of Jerusalem, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Radiologists.

He is past President of the SCCT, British Society of Cardiovascular CT, and British Society of Cardiovascular Imaging. He is a past chair of the BCS Imaging Council. Additionally he is past President of the RSM Military Medicine Section, previously Clinical Lead for the HSJ Award winning RAF Clinical Aviation Medicine Service and a previous member of NHS England Armed Forces Clinical Reference Group. He was previously the Deputy Lead for the Armed Forces on the Council of the Academy of Royal Colleges Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management.

Michelle Williams

UK

Professor Michelle Williams is a Professor of Cardiovascular Imaging at the University of Edinburgh and Honorary Consultant Radiologist at NHS Lothian. She is Associate Director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre and the Imaging theme lead. Her research centres around multi-modality non-invasive imaging of the heart and blood vessels, including using machine learning and other advanced analytic techniques. She is president of the British Society of Cardiovascular Imaging, member of the executive community of the European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology, member of the Board of Directors of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography.

Lars Maegdefessel

Germany

Lars Maegdefessel studied medicine in Mainz (Germany), Bern (Switzerland) and New York (USA). Upon completion of his medical studies and finalizing his doctorate, he became a Clinical fellow in Cardiology and Vascular Medicine in Mainz, before moving to Stanford University as a Postdoctoral research fellow. In 2012 he was recruited to the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and in 2016 he started having a dual affiliation between Stockholm and the Technical University in Munich (TUM), Germany. He has recently been promoted to become the Director of the newly formed Institute of Molecular Vascular Medicine at TUM. Dr. Maegdefessel’s laboratories in Munich and Stockholm utilize multi-omics approaches to unravel novel molecular targets with relevance to atherosclerosis and vascular disease progression. Dr. Maegdefessel has been awarded research grants and awards from the European Research Council (Starting and Consolidator Grants), the German Research and Swedish Research Councils (DFG and Vetenkapsradet), the German Ministry of Education and Research, the Swedish Heart and Lung Foundation, the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), the National Institute of Health (NIH), as well as the American Heart Association (Russel Ross Award in Atherosclerosis Research, Werner Risau Award in Vascular Biology).

Bram Slütter

The Netherlands

Bram Slütter obtained a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from Leiden University in 2011. From 2010 to 2015 he trained as postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of John Harty at the Carver College of Medicine of the University of Iowa. He joined the academic staff of the Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research of Leiden University in 2015 and is an associate professor since 2021. His research focuses on behavior of T-cells in inflammatory conditions, within an emphasis on cardiovascular disease. His group has made substantial contributions to the “auto-immune theory” in atherosclerosis and works on development of novel treatment strategies.

Calum McRae

US

Calum A. MacRae, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the Director of One Brave Idea (a biomedical innovation program founded by Verily, the American Heart Association and AstraZeneca), Vice Chair for Scientific Innovation in the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an Associate Member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He is the principal investigator of the Apple Heart & Movement study and has worked on the integration of digital health and genomics with multiple large technology companies. He also directs an NIH-funded basic science group and has developed systematic approaches at the tech::bio interface to uncover novel human disease mechanisms. In his clinical work, he is a Cardiologist and Geneticist, co-directs the Genomic Medicine Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and is a clinical lead in the Harvard Undiagnosed Diseases Center. He and his collaborators have created rigorous approaches to automating accessible components of biomedicine to enable transformation of care delivery, real world discovery, and to establish a foundation for continuously learning biomedical systems.

Jamini Cegla

UK

Dr. Jaimini Cegla has a specialist interest in lipidology and cardiovascular risk and splits her time between clinical, laboratory and academic research roles. In her clinical role she looks after the Hammersmith Hospital Lipid Service, a one-stop centre for the genetic diagnosis and management of lipid disorders, which also offers research facilities and access to new medications.

Dr. Cegla’s current research focuses on cardiovascular risk including clinical trials of novel therapeutic agents. Dr. Cegla is a member of the Medical, Scientific and Research Committee of HEART UK, the cholesterol charity. She also sits on the National Clinical Advisory Group for Lipids, that advises NHS England for strategy on CVD prevention.

Niels Riksen

The Netherlands

After finishing medical school at the Radboud university in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Niels Riksen combined a residency in Internal Medicine with a PhD in clinical pharmacology (2007 cum laude). In 2007 and 2008 he worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Hatter Cardiovascular Institute (University College London) in London. In 2010 he was registered as specialist in internal medicine and vascular medicine.
He was appointed full professor of vascular medicine in 2014 at the Radboud university medical center and is currently head of the division of vascular medicine. He leads a translational research group investigating the role of innate immune cell reprogramming in the development of atherosclerosis and related vascular diseases. He’s a nucleus member of the ESC working group on Atherosclerosis and Vascular Biology. In 2023 he was elected member of the Academia Europaea. In addition, he served as chair of the Netherlands Society for Vascular Medicine (NVIVG) and is currently Editorial Board member of Atherosclerosis.

Danilo Norata

Italy

Professor of Pharmacology, Head Laboratory of Pharmacology of CardioImmunoMetabolic Disorders.Department of Excellence of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences “Rodolfo Paoletti”,Coordinator Doctorate School of Pharmacological and Biomolecular Sciences, Experimental and Clinical, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
(2018-on). Adjunct Professor, School of Biomedical Sciences, Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute, Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia (2016-2018). Associate Professor, University of Milan (2014-2018). Honorary Senior Lecturer, The Blizard Institute, Barts and The London, School of Medicine & Dentistry Queen Mary University, London (2012-2015). Assistant Professor, University of Milan (2008-2014). Post-Doc, Atherosclerosis Research Unit, Karolinska Hospital, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden (2002-2004).
Cardiovascular Research, Editorial Board (Associate Editor, 2017-on); Atherosclerosis, Editorial Board (Associate Editor, 2015-on); Annals of Medicine, Editorial Board (Section Editor, 2020-on). Chair European Atherosclerosis Society Congress Committee (2021-on)

Evangelos Oikonomou

US

Dr. Evangelos K. Oikonomou is a cardiovascular medicine fellow at Yale University and a post-doctoral fellow in the Yale Cardiovascular Data Science (CarDS) Lab. His work focuses on the intersection of statistical machine learning, computer vision, and digital biomarkers for the precise and scalable phenotyping of cardiovascular disease. He is the recipient of an F32 fellowship from NHLBI/NIH, young investigator awards from the European Society of Cardiology, American Heart Association and Northwestern Cardiovascular Young Investigator Forum, as well as the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) e-Gen award. He serves as an Associate Editor for European Heart Journal.

Jan Nilsson

Sweden

Jan Nilsson is Professor of Experimental Cardiovascular Research at Lund University, Sweden. He received is MD, PhD and specialist training in internal medicine at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He has been associate professor of cell biology and professor of medicine at the Karolinska Institute. Jan Nilsson has been visiting professor of medicine at UCLA, chairman of the Atherosclerosis Working Group of the European Society of Cardiology, dean of the medical school at Lund University, deputy chairman of the Swedish Research Council and chairman of the Scientific Board of the Swedish Heart and Lung foundation. He is a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences and chairman of the board of Karolinska Institute. His research is focused on the role of inflammation and immunity in atherosclerosis with particular emphasis on development of novel therapies.