Gavazzeni Hospital, Bergamo, Italy
Alfonso Agnino is Chief of the Robotic and Minimally Invasive Cardiac Surgery Division at the Gavazzeni Hospital in Bergamo, Italy, where Alfonso has performed over 700 major surgical procedures on CPB, of which over 300 of minimally invasive surgery and 250 robotic surgery, during the period of 2019 – 2023. Alfonso completed his residency in cardiac surgery at the University of Bali and also at the Centre University Hospital (CHU) in Rennes, France. He then completed a fellowship in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery at CHU in Rennes until he moved onto becoming a cardiac surgeon and then Chief at S. Anna Hospital-Cantanzaro in Italy. Alfonso is also adjunct professor of cardiac surgery in the University of Torino, Italy.
Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Andreu Porta-Sánchez graduated in medicine from the Universitat de Barcelona in 2007 and completed his residency in cardiology at Hospital Universitari Vall d’Hebron in Barcelona (2008-13). Following his residency, he received a post-graduate training grant from «la Caixa» Banking Foundation and pursued further clinical and research training in arrhythmia at the University of Toronto (Canada) from 2014 until 2017. In December 2017 he obtained his fellowship in cardiac electrophysiolgy from the University of Toronto and decided to come back to his country of origin to pursue an academic career in cardiology. He obtained his PhD in ventricular tachycardia at Universitat de Barcelona (cum laude) in 2019 and after four years of leading the arrhythmia unit at Hospital Universitario Quirónsalud Madrid and teaching as an assistant professor of medicine at Universidad Europea de Madrid, he moved in early 2022 to Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, where he works in the arrhythmia unit. Since late 2017, he has been a research fellow at the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) in Madrid in the Molecular Cardiology Laboratory led by Prof. Silvia Priori.
St. Antonius Hospital, Nieuwegein, the Netherlands
Dr. Bart van Putte graduated medical school in 2002 at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). In 2003 he successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Utrecht on experimental lung surgery (isolated lung therapy with gemcitabine for the treatment of lung metastases). In 2010 he finished his residency and became cardiothoracic surgeon. From 2011-2013 he worked as staff member in Amphia hospital Breda, the Netherlands. Since 2013 he has been practicing at St. Antonius hospital Nieuwegein (Netherlands) and has been responsible for the residency training program since 2017. His current clinical and scientific focus is minimally invasive mitral and AF surgery including left appendage management resulting in several (finished and ongoing) PhD theses. As a proctor for thoracoscopic AF ablation he has trained more than 25 centers worldwide since 2012. Bart was taskforce member of the 2016 and 2020 ESC/EACTS Guidelines for Atrial Fibrillation.
Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC+), Maastricht, the Netherlands
Dr. Bart Maesen studied medicine at the University of Antwerp. After obtaining his medical degree, he conducted scientific research into ischemia/reperfusion damage at the University of Antwerp. He subsequently moved to Maastricht University where he conducted research into various aspects of the substrate of AF in Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schotten’s group. In 2011 he was trained as a cardiothoracic surgeon at Maastricht UMC+ and registered as such in 2017. In 2015 he received his PhD from Maastricht University. In addition to general cardiothoracic procedures, his attention is focused on minimally invasive surgery (Hybrid AF Ablation, rhythm surgery, transcatheter heart valve intervention). Within the European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery (EACTS) he is a member of the Arrhythmia Task Force.
Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Daniel Pereda completed medical school at the University of Barcelona and completed his residency in Cardiovascular Surgery at the Hospital Clínic of Barcelona. After his residency he completed two clinical fellowships at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MD) and Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD) before joining the staff at Hospital Clínic of Barcelona in 2011. His main areas of interest are minimally invasive valve surgery, particularly mitral repair both thoracoscopic and robotic and surgery of congenital heart defects in adults.
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, USA
David R. Holmes III, Ph.D., studies the methods by which health care researchers analyze and interpret large data sets. Health-related data is constantly being collected through the digitalization of medical records and the concordant interest in personal health monitoring. Because of this wealth of information, health care data makes up significant sectors of the big data industry, including in-hospital sensing, clinical reporting, medical imaging and home-based wellness. Health care data is large, diverse and often incomplete, and is difficult to analyze and interpret. Dr. Holmes is investigating new methods, which attempt to link disparate data sets and build computational models directly from the data. Research into data representation, signal processing, graph analytics and machine learning is yielding new and novel insight into basic biology and human health. To match the complexity of these algorithms and the magnitude of data, Dr. Holmes also studies the mapping of health care questions onto novel computational architecture.
University of Birmingham, UK
Dipak Kotecha is a Professor of Cardiology at the University of Birmingham, and a Consultant Cardiologist specialising in cardiac imaging. He has completed a prestigious National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Fellowship and was awarded the British Cardiovascular Society Michael Davies Medal in 2018 for his contribution to cardiovascular medicine. He works extensively across the 57 countries of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in education, trials and guidelines, and his research focuses on the interaction of heart failure and atrial fibrillation, supported by grants from the NIHR, British Heart Foundation and the European Union. Dipak leads many international collaborations, with interests in public involvement, big data approaches, the application of artificial intelligence, and the use of novel technology (e.g. the cardAIc group). He is passionate about innovative yet pragmatic trial design and healthcare-embedded approaches to improve patient care. This includes the RATE-AF trial (co-designed with a patient and public team), the DaRe2THINK trial (a fully remote, national, randomised trial within the electronic health record), and STEEER-AF (an education trial taking place across 6 countries). Professor Kotecha led the international CODE-EHR framework to improve how healthcare data is used in clinical research, and is chairing the 2024 ESC Guidelines on the management of patients with atrial fibrillation. He is Digital Trials Committee director for the newly awarded NHS West Midlands Secure Data Environment, Chair of the European Heart Failure Association Committee on Atrial Disorders, and co-leads the NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre theme on thrombo-inflammation.
Gavazzeni Hospital, Bergamo, Italy
Experienced Chief of Cardiology with a demonstrated history of working in Cardiac EP. Skilled in Clinical Research, Medical Education, Medical Devices, Complex Cardiac Ablations, Lead Extractions, Life Sciences and Medicine. Strong professional graduated from Cardiovascular Center Aalst, Belgium.
Northwestern University Medical Center, Chicago, USA
Dr. James Cox is best known for his work in the field of cardiac arrhythmia surgery and the development of the Cox-Maze Procedure for the treatment of AF completing the first “Maze” procedure in 1987. On January 1, 2017, Dr. Cox was appointed professor of surgery and surgical director of the Center for Heart Rhythm Disorders at the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Cox was the 81st president of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS), is a member of the editorial board of over 20 scientific journals, chairman of the Residency Review Committee for thoracic surgery, a director of the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, a member of the Surgical Study Section at the National Institutes of Health and a founding member of the following boards: Board of Directors of CTSNet, Board of Directors of the Thoracic Surgery Foundation for Research and Education and the Joint Council on Thoracic Surgical Education. He was elected to the Russian Academy of Science in 2005.
Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Jorge Alcocer has been a cardiovascular surgeon at Hospital Clínic de Barcelona since 2019. He completed his residency in cardiovascular surgery at the Hospital Clínico de Valencia. From 2010 until 2018, Dr. Alcocer was a surgeon in the cardiovascular surgery department in the Hospital Universitario del Vinalopó. He completed his fellowship at the European Board of Cardiothoracic Surgery in 2020.
La Paz University Hospital, Madrid, Spain
Dr. Jose L Merino is director of the Arrhythmia– Electrophysiology Research Unit at La Paz University Hospital in Madrid. His research focus is the clinical management of arrhythmia and interventional electrophysiology, and he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. He is also involved in the development of pre-market-release versions of electrophysiology navigation systems. Dr Merino is past president of the Working Group on Arrhythmia and chairman of the Accreditation Committee of the Spanish Society of Cardiology. He is also past chairman of the Accreditation Committee of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), a member of the organizing committee of the past and next Europace congresses and a member of the EHRA’s Scientific Initiative Committee. Dr Merino serves on the editorial board of several journals, including EP-Europace and Revista española de cardiología, and is a fellow of the ESC and an honorary member of the Argentinian and other Latin American societies of cardiology.
Hospital Clínic, Barcelona, Spain
Dr. Manuel Castella is a cardiovascular surgeon, head of the Cardiovascular Surgery Department at the Hospital Clínic, University of Barcelona. The department is a national referral for complex mitral repair including robotic, pulmonary thromboendarterectomy, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and adult congenital heart disease. Among all types of cardiac surgery, Dr. Castella’s main interest and fields of research are AF surgery and pulmonary thromboendarterectomy. He has co-led trials in thoracoscopic AF ablation and he has been member of the ESC/EACTS Committee for the development of the Guidelines for Atrial Fibrillation Management in 2016 and 2020. Since 2018, Dr. Castella is the chairman of the Arrhythmia Surgery Task Force of EACTS. His interests are port-access mitral repair and other types of minimally invasive surgery.
Hospital Clínico San Carlos, Madrid, Spain
Dr Manuel Carnero is an Adult Cardiac Surgeon at the Hospital Clínico San Carlos in Madrid, Spain. His expertise is in arrhythmia surgery, minimally invasive procedures and heart failure treatment. Manuel is a Member of the scientific committee of the Spanish National Registry of Cardiovascular Surgery. Manuel has a Postdoctoral master’s degree in Research Methodology and Statistics and is a statistical reviewer for EJCTS and ICVTS as well as a Member of the editorial board of Revista Española de Cardiología. Manuel has a postdoctoral master’s degree in clinical management and is the Quality Manager of the Cardiac Surgery Department at the Hospital Clínico San Carlos. Manual also has a postdoctoral master’s degree in echocardiography. Manuel is also a member of EACTS and the Spanish Society of Cardiology, is General Secretary of the Spanish Society of Cardiovascular and Endovascular Surgery, and Investigator for the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC). Manuel has authored 95 manuscripts as first author or collaborator. ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5045-576.
University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium
Dr. Mark La Meir is chair and professor of cardiac surgery and head of the Cardiac Surgery Department at the University Hospital Brussels and consultant at the Maastricht University Medical Center (the Netherlands). He earned his medical degree in 1992 and completed his PhD on hybrid treatment of atrial fibrillation in 2012. He has a special interest in the concomitant and standalone treatment of cardiac arrhythmias. Since 2005 he developed hybrid approaches for the treatment of atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, inappropriate sinus nude dysfunction, premature ventricular contractions and Brugada syndrome. He is a board member of the Arrhythmia Task Force of the European Association for Cardiothoracic Surgery. He has authored or co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed publications.
Schüchtermann Klinik, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany
Since April 2020, Prof. Nicolas Doll holds the post of Medical Director of Heart Surgery at Schüchtermann Klinik, Bad Rothenfelde, Germany. Previously, Prof. Doll was the Medical Director and Head of Department of Cardiac Surgery at Sana Heart Center Stuttgart, Germany. His fields of interest include surgical ablation of AF, pacemaker, defibrillator, biventricular stimulation, OPCAB surgery, minimally invasive valve surgery and diving medicine.
Northwestern University, Chicago, USA
Dr. Olga N. Kislitsina, MD, PhD, is a Research Associate Professor at Northwestern University - The Feinberg School of Medicine. She received her Doctor of Philosophy from Moscow University School of Medicine. Her research interests are Cardiology, Atrial Fibrillation, Heart Failure, Echocardiography, Myocardial Infarction, Hypertension, Cardiac Function, Cardiovascular Medicine, Atherosclerosis, and Blood Pressure.
Navarra University Hospital, Pamplona, Spain
Dr Sádaba graduated in Medicine and Surgery from the University of the Basque Country (Bilbao, Spain) and completed his basic and advanced training in Cardio-Thoracic Surgery at the Leeds General Infirmary (Leeds, UK), East Yorkshire Hospitals (Cottingham, UK) and the Sir Charles Gardner Hospital (Perth, Australia). During his training, he was awarded a Master’s Degree in Science by the University of Leeds. Subsequently he was awarded a PhD degree by the Public University of Navarra for his work on degenerative aortic valve disease. Dr Sádaba is currently Chief of Cardiac Surgery at the Navarra University Hospital and Associate Professor of Surgery at the Public University of Navarra in Pamplona (Spain). He is Area Coordinator (Cardiovascular and Renal Diseases) at the Health Research Institute of Navarra (IdiSNA). His research interests have focused on the surgical pathology of the heart valves.
McMaster University Medical School, Hamilton, Canada
Dr. Richard Whitlock is a Canadian cardiovascular surgeon and a professor of surgery at McMaster University Medical School. Dr. Whitlock joined the Department of Cardiac Surgery as an assistant professor in 2012. He also became a principal investigator (PI) at the Population Health Research Institute at the same time. He is most well known for being the PI of the SIRS (Steroids in Cardiac Surgery) trial and the LAAOS III (Left Atrial Appendage Occlusion Study) trial, a trial to determine the effectiveness of left atrial appendage occlusion during cardiac surgery in patients with AF.
Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, UK
Mr Nashef qualified as a doctor at the University of Bristol in 1980, and trained in general surgery in London and Exeter. His specialist training in cardiac surgery was in Glasgow, Sheffield, Manchester and Bordeaux in France. He was appointed consultant surgeon at Royal Papworth Hospital in 1992. He practises all types of cardiac surgery, with a special interest in minimally invasive coronary bypass, mitral repair and surgery for atrial fibrillation. He is also interested in surgery of the aortic root. He has many research interests, a major one being measuring and monitoring the quality of surgical treatment, and has led national and international projects in this field. He is the author of the Naked Surgeon, a book which deals with the issues of transparency in medicine, and more recently the Angina Monologues - stories of surgery for broken hearts. Both books are published by Scribe.
Santa Chiara Hospital, Trento, Italy
Dr. Branzoli is a doctor at the Department of Cardiology at Santa Chiara Hospital.
Bart’s Heart Centre, London, UK
Dr Ahsan graduated from Guys Kings and St Thomas’ Medical School in 2000 with a First Class Honours degree in his BSc. He undertook his cardiology specialist training at various prestigious hospitals in London, where he has worked with world-renowned experts. These include the Royal Brompton Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the Heart Hospital, where he undertook his fellowship in Cardiac Electrophysiology. His postgraduate medical doctorate was awarded from University College London and evaluated strategies to optimise outcomes in patients with cardiac rhythm devices. His research work was awarded the Royal Society of Medicine National Prize in 2009 and was presented nationally and internationally at cardiac conferences. He has been a finalist in two national young investigator awards. In his current role, our heart specialist Dr Ahsan sees and treats many different cardiology conditions. He is a highly-experienced operator. He routinely implants all types of cardiac pacing resynchronisation and defibrillator devices. Dr Ahsan also performs ablations for arrhythmia and coronary angiography. He also sees and treats patients with blackouts, chest pains, and high blood pressure.
German Heart Center of Charité (DHZC), Berlin, Germany
Professor Volkmar Falk is the Medical Director and Director of the Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery of the German Heart Center Berlin, Chair of the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Charité Berlin and Professor for Translational Cardiovascular Technologies at the ETH, Zurich. After successfully completing medical school and his doctorate at the University of Bonn, he began his basic surgical training at the University in Göttingen and completed his residency at the Department of Cardiac Surgery of the Heart Center Leipzig. From 1998 to 2003 he held the position of a senior surgeon there, with an interruption of his clinical work for a one year research fellowship at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. In 2001 he completed his “Habilitation” (German post-doctoral university teaching qualification) and in 2003 he became a senior consultant. From 2009-2014 Volmar was appointed Professor and Director of the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery at the University Hospital in Zurich. In 2014 he was appointed Professor and Chair of the Division of Cardiovascular Surgery at the Charite Berlin and became the Medical Director and Director of the DHZB Department of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgery of the Deutsches Herzzentrum Berlin. Since 2018 he was appointed Professor for Translational Cardiovascular Technologies at the ETH, Zurich. His main areas of current clinical and academic research are in the field of endoscopic and minimally invasive cardiac surgery and image guided transcatheter therapies. He was co-founder of the Innovation Center for Computer Assisted Surgery (ICCAS) at the University of Leipzig funded by the German Ministry of Research and Education (BMBF). In Zürich he established numerous research collaborations with the ETH, among them “Zurich Heart” Project, an interdisciplinary project at the interface of medical engineering and surgery for the development of new components for mechanical circulatory assist systems. He is currently PI of the project, which received intense funding over the last 5 years. Volkmar is the author or co-author of over 566 scientific publications (listed in Pubmed, Hirsch-Index 63) and serves in various functions (Board member, President, Committees) in numerous international professional societies (EACTS, ESC, DGTHG, SGHC, ISMICS and others). He serves on the editorial board of a number of journals in the field and on a number of International Guideline-Committees. He is co-authour and