Members
The Media task force team is composed in 2024 of the following members:
Antoine Bondue
Antoine Bondue is the coordinator of the CGC media task force. He is the head of the Department of Cardiology and the Rare Disease director of the HUB Erasme Hospital in Brussels (ULB, Brussels). He is the president of the Belgian Heart Ligue and the president of the Belgian Council on Cardiovascular Genomics. He is a cardiologist with a clinical expertise in cardiovascular genetics and cardiomyopathies. His research projects are focused on genetics, cardiomyopathy, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and congenital heart diseases.
Stefan Kaab
Stefan Kaab is the past-coordinator of the CGC media task force, and the president-elected of the council. He is a senior faculty at University Hospital LMU, Munich Germany. As a translational cardiologist and electrophysiologist with basic and clinical research interest, its expertise resides in rare genetic arrhythmia disorders as well as in susceptibility to common arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation and sudden cardiac death. He has a great experience and ongoing interest in training fellows with a clinician scientist perspective, and a great interest in promoting genetic and genomic concepts in clinical practice.
Dimitra Antonakaki
Dimitra Antonakaki graduated with honors from the Medical University of Athens in Greece. She completed her Medical and Cardiology training and obtained her CCT in London. She subsequently subspecialized in Inherited Cardiac Conditions and multimodality Cardiovascular Imaging at Barts Heart Centre, London. During this time, she obtained a competitive scholarship from St George’s University of London to study the Sports Cardiology MSc and graduated with distinction. More recently, Dimitra has sat on the UK National Association of Inherited Cardiac Conditions (AICC) Council as the trainee representative. She has been a Consultant Cardiologist in Inherited Cardiac Conditions at the John Radcliffe University Hospital in Oxford. She is currently a Consultant Cardiologist in Inherited Cardiac Conditions, Cardiac MRI and Sports Cardiology at the National Heart & Lung Transplant Centre, “Onassis Cardiac Surgery Center” in Greece. In addition, Dimitra is an Honorary Senior Clinical Lecturer at St George’s University of London where she is the Lead of the Advanced Management and Genomics of Inherited Cardiac Conditions MSc module.
Alessia Argirò
Alessia Argirò is a cardiologist and PhD student at the University of Florence. Her clinical and research activity is focused on genetic cardiomyopathies. She is interested in new therapeutic options and clinical trials in rare heart diseases.
Olga D. Boleti
Olga Boleti is a clinical research training fellow and PhD candidate at the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, University College London, London, UK, where she has gained experience in inherited cardiovascular diseases in children, working in particular towards deep phenotyping RASopathy-associated hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. She trained in medicine in her home country, Greece, and entered pediatric specialty training in London, UK, becoming a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.
Mihnea Casian
Mihnea Casian is a cardiology fellow in Inherited Cardiac Conditions Clinic, St. George’s University Hospital, London, and a PhD student of the Department of Cardiology in Bucharest (Prof. Dr. C. C. Iliescu; Emergency Institute for Cardiovascular Diseases, Bucharest and Expert Center for Rare Genetic Cardiovascular Diseases). He is passionate about inherited cardiac conditions, sports cardiology and understanding sudden cardiac death. As he won a grant from the Romanian Society of Cardiology, he is currently training in the Inherited Cardiac Conditions Clinic at St. George's University Hospital London, where his clinical practice and research activity revolve around athletes, individuals with cardiomyopathies and families of sudden cardiac death victims.
Diederik Kuster
Diederik Kuster is an assistant professor at the Physiology department at the Amsterdam University Medical Center. His interest is on understanding the pathophysiology of inherited cardiomyopathies with a special focus on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Combining molecular biology and physiology, his passion lies in performing translational studies focusing on improving diastolic dysfunction and better understand contractility in the HCM disease process.
Sara Moscatelli
Sara Moscatelli is a PhD Candidate at Great Ormond Street Hospital and University College in London. She is currently working on pediatric inherited cardiovascular diseases in JP Kaski’s clinical and research unit. Before this, she was a Fellow at Great Ormond Street Hospital and honed her expertise in pediatric cardiology at Royal Brompton Hospital, London, including a focus on pediatric cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. A proud alumnus of the University of Genova, Italy, she specialized in cardiology with a groundbreaking thesis on the concordance between stress CMR and coronary angiography in pediatric patients with suspected coronary disease, conducted at the esteemed Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genova.
Tomas Robyns
Tomas Robyns currently works as a cardiologist at the University hospitals Leuven in Belgium. He was trained in Leuven and the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam. He has special expertise in cardiogenetics and electrophysiology. He is the head of the Centre for hereditary heart disease at the University hospitals Leuven, and a founding member of the Belgian Council on Cardiogenomics. His research focuses on the genotype phenotype relation of inherited cardiomyopathies and arrhythmia syndromes.
Fernando de Frutos Seminario
Fernando de Frutos Seminario finished his training in Cardiology at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge (Barcelona, Spain) and moved to Pablo Garcia-Pavia’s Inherited Cardiac Conditions Unit (Madrid, Spain) for a 2-year training programme. Now he is established as a Consultant Cardiologist at Hospital Universitari de Bellvitge (Barcelona, Spain). His research is focused on the underlying genetics of dilated cardiomyopathy and hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis.
Our mission: To reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.