What is HFA Career Café ?
HFA Career Café is the meeting place for the future generation of cardiologists.
During two individual interviews of 20 minutes, selected applicants can interact with leaders in their specialty and receive career development advice and recommendations.
This is a unique platform where long-lasting relationships can begin.
Important dates
HFA Career Café 2024 will take place in the HFA Members Lounge on:
- Sunday, 12 May at 17:15
- Monday, 13 May at 17:15
Each session will be followed by a short networking cocktail to continue the discussion.
Registration is now closed.
Am I eligible?
In order to participate, you must fulfil the mandatory eligibility criteria:
- Under 40 years old or in training
- Registered for Heart Failure 2024: Register now
- HFA Silver, Gold and Fellow Member: Become an HFA Member now
IMPORTANT: Applicants must not have any conflicting role at the same time.
The registration is now closed.
Schedule of the mentors
Sunday, 12 May (17:15–18:15)
- Antonio Bayes Genis
- Cecilia Linde
- Finn Gustafsson
- Folkert Asselbergs
- Frank Ruschitzka
- Gianluigi Savarese
- John Cleland
- Loreena Hill
- Maria Generosa Crespo-Leiro
- Marianna Adamo
- Nicolas Girerd
- Ovidiu Chioncel
- Pietro Ameri
- Sophie Van Linthout
- Teresa Lopez Fernandez
- Wilfried Mullens
Monday, 13 May (17:15–18:15)
- Arantxa Gonzalez Miqueo
- Dana Dawson
- Faiez Zannad
- Finn Gustafsson
- Frank Ruschitzka
- Iacopo Olivotto
- Kenneth Dickstein
- Loreena Hill
- Maggie Simpson
- Maria Teresa Tome Esteban
- Mitja Lainscak
- Nicolas Girerd
- Peter Van Der Meer
- Pietro Ameri
- Wilfried Mullens
Get to know your Mentors
Antonio Bayes Genis
Dr Antoni Bayes-Genis is Head of the Heart Institute at Hospital Universitari Germans Trias i Pujol in Badalona (Barcelona, Spain), director of the ICREC (Heart Failure and Cardiac Regeneration) Research Program. Dr. Bayes-Genis is HFA Executive board member and HFA Clinical Section Chair. He is a Full Professor and past vice-Dean at Autonomous University of Barcelona. His research is focused in two main areas, one more clinical and another basic-translational. From the clinical standpoint he is interested in precision medicine in heart failure, biomarkers, sudden death, devices, new treatment options and epidemiology. At the basic-translational level he is focused on novel regenerative approaches to rejuvenate the heart, including tissue engineering, cell-derived products and other things. He has published over 620 articles with more than 20000 citations. He is the inventor of 9 international patents.
Place of work
University Hospital Germans Trias and Pujol de Badalona - Badalona, Spain
Arantxa Gonzalez Miqueo
Dr. González (PhD in Biochemistry 2003, University of Navarra, Spain) is the Director of the Program of Cardiovascular Disease (CIMA-Universidad de Navarra) and a group leader at the Spanish Cardiovascular Research Network (CIBERCV). She was granted the Norman R. Alpert Award in 2005 (ESC-AHA joint award). She was appointed as a Fellow of the Spanish Royal Academy of Science in 2023. She is also a member of the HFA Board since 2020 (Basic Science Section).
Her research is focused on the study of myocardial remodelling in chronic heart failure, specially fibrosis, with a double aim: Identifying clinically useful non-invasive circulating biomarkers for improved diagnosis, risk stratification and personalised management; delving into fibrosis mechanisms to identify novel therapeutic targets. She has contributed to over 175 scientific publications (H index of 68) and she has led over 20 competitive research
Place of work
CIMA University of Navarre, Pamplona, Navarra (Spain)
Cecilia Linde
A cardiologist and a Professor in Cardiology at the Heart and Vascular Theme at the Karolinska University Hospital and the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden. Her research currently focuses on devices and their implementation and epidemiology in heart failure. Cecilia Linde is Vice President of the Board member of the ESC for the period of 2018-2020 responsible for working groups, councils, women, the young and the membership committee and serves as member of the Congress Programme Committee as topic chair for arrhythmia and the Secretary Treasurer of the ESC Board.
Place of work
Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (Sweden)
Dana Dawson
Professor Dawson graduated in Medicine at the University of Iasi, Romania. After completing her MRCP with the Royal College of Physicians in London she read for a D. Phil in Cardiovascular Medicine at Merton College, University of Oxford. She trained in Cardiology in Edinburgh and London in the UK and at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, USA. She is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Consultant Cardiologist at the University of Aberdeen and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. Her research interests are varied, from acute stress induced (Takotsubo) cardiomyopathy to exercise based interventions to further mechanistic knowledge of cardio-metabolic health in diabetes and cardiomyopathies. She is exploring specific interventions in randomised controlled studies of heart failure, mechanistic substrate of beta-blocker benefit in COPD patients and anthracycline-induced myocardial insult in patients with breast cancer, as well as the novel Fast Field-cycling cardiac MRI. Professor Dawson is also chair of the ESC Working Group on Myocardial Function for the 2022-2024 mandate.
Place of work
University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen (United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland)
Faiez Zannad
MD, PhD, Cardiologist, Clinical pharmacologist. Trained at Université de Lorraine, Université of Lyon, France and Medical Research Council (Oxford, UK). Currently, Emeritus Professor of Therapeutics at Université de Lorraine, France. As a trialist, he contributed to building the evidence supporting modern HF therapy, notably with beta-blockers, RAASi and MRAs. As a clinical scientist his work focuses on fibrosis and biomarkers. He has served as Chairman of the French Society of Hypertension, of the ESC Working Group on Pharmacology and Drug Therapy. He is the founder of the Global CardioVascular Clinical Trialists (CVCT) Forum and Workshop with meetings in Paris, Washington DC, in Asia and the Middle East. Professor Zannad published more than 750 peer-reviewed papers. He received the 2014 European Society of Hypertension Paul Milliez Award and the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award from the ESC-HFA and served as an Eugene Braunwald Scholar in 2019 at Harvard Medical School.
Place of work
University of Lorraine, Vandoeuvre-Les-Nancy (France)
Finn Gustafsson
Finn Gustafsson, MD, PhD (born 1968) is a professor of cardiology at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) and medical director of the advanced heart failure, transplantation and MCS program at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He obtained his medical degree at UCPH in 1994 and completed his clinical training in Denmark and Canada. A PhD in microvascular physiology was awarded to him at UCPH in 2000. He is an author of more than 300 peer reviewed articles and several book chapters. He serves on the steering committee of several international clinical trials and registries within the field of advanced heart failure. He is an associate editor for European Journal of Heart Failure and on the editorial board of the International Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation and Cardiac Failure Review.
Place of work
Rigshospitalet - Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen (Denmark)
Folkert Asselbergs
Prof. Dr. Folkert W. Asselbergs is a consultant cardiologist, vice-chair of Amsterdam Heart Center, Prof of Precision medicine at the Institute of Cardiovascular Science and Institute of Health Informatics, University College London, Director BRC Clinical and Research Informatics Unit, UCLH, chair data infrastructure Dutch Cardiovascular Alliance, and associate editor of the European Heart Journal for the section digital innovation. He recently founded the nudging unit that will provide a framework to conduct pragmatic trials embedded within routine care for knowledge discovery and improvement of patient care by increasing guideline adherence. His research program focuses on precision medicine using real-world data from electronic health records and registries and -omics research for drug target discovery, pharmacogenetics and stratified medicine using digital twinning.
Place of work
Amsterdam University Medical Centre, Amsterdam (Netherlands (The))
Franck Ruschitzka
Professor Frank Ruschitzka, MD, FRCP (Edinburgh), FESC is Chairman of the University Heart Center and the Department of Cardiology at the University Hospital in Zürich, Switzerland. Professor Ruschitzka received his medical degree in 1989 and has specialized in internal medicine and cardiology at the Universities of Göttingen and Zürich. Professor Ruschitzka received numerous awards, including the Cardiovascular Science Award of the Swiss Society of Cardiology, the annual Götz-Preis of the Medical Faculty of the University of Zürich for excellence in clinical medicine and research as well as the Honoris Causa Doctorate of the University of Medicine “Carol Davila” Bucharest. Professor Ruschitzka is Past-President of the Heart Failure Association of the ESC. Professor Ruschitzka`s research focuses on the development of novel drugs, devices and interventions, in heart failure in particular. He is one of the Highly Cited Researchers in the field of Clinical Medicine 2022 (Web of Science)
Place of work
University Heart Center, Zurich, Switzerland
Gianluigi Savarese
Gianluigi Savarese is currently Associate Professor of Cardiology at Karolinska Institutet and Consultant for Heart Failure at the Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. He received his MD from Federico II University in Naples (Italy) in 2010 and underwent cardiology residency (2011-2016) at the same Institution. In 2013-2014 he was guest fellow at the Center for Molecular Cardiology of the University of Zurich. In 2017 he got the title of heart failure specialist from the University of Zurich and the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. In 2018 he received his PhD from the Karolinska Institutet. He is currently Board member of the Heart Failure Association and the WG on CV pharmacotherapy of the ESC. Over the last 5 years he has published >200 scientific works on top peer-reviewed journals focusing mainly on heart failure, epidemiology and CV pharmacotherapy. He is Associate Editor for EJHF, deputy for EHJ-Open and EHJ-CR.
Place of work
Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden
Iacopo Olivotto
Prof. Olivotto is Full Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Florence and Chief of Cardiology at Meyer Children Hospital, as well as coordinator of the adult cardiomyopathy services at Careggi University Hospital, in Florence. Over the last three decades, his main clinical and research interests have included various aspects of cardiomyopathies, with special focus on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and other genetic forms of cardiac disease. In recent years, he has pioneered the development of novel pharmacological treatments for patients with cardiomyopathies, including trial design for targeted drugs involving small molecules and gene therapies. He is a co-founder of the Share international registry for Cardiomyopathies and serves as the Regional expert for rare genetic heart diseases for the region of Tuscany, Italy.
Place of work
University of Florence, Florence (Italy)
John Cleland
Professor Cleland is a Cardiologist and Director of the Robertson Centre for Biostatistics (Glasgow), an internationally renowned Clinical Trials Unit offering a complete service both to academia and industry for cardiovascular and metabolic disease. His main interest is heart failure, extending from epidemiology & prevention, to Phase II-IV trials and guidelines. Particular current interests include myocardial substrate, congestion & inflammation, telemonitoring & theranostics. He qualified from the University of Glasgow in 1977, completed training at St. Mary's & Hammersmith Hospitals (London) and was awarded a Senior Fellowship by the British Heart Foundation. He was appointed Prof. at the University of Hull and, in 2013, the National Heart & Lung Institute, Royal Brompton & Harefield Hospitals, Imperial College London. He founded the European Journal of Heart Failure. He is Past-Chair of the ESC Working Group on heart failure and British Society for Heart Failure
Place of work
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Kenneth Dickstein
Kenneth Dickstein was born in Philadelphia and completed undergraduate education at the Univ. of Pennsylvania. He has medical degrees from the Univ. of London and the Royal College of Surgeons. He was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and completed his PhD in exercise physiology at the Univ. of Bergen. Professor Dickstein is a professor of medicine at the Univ. of Bergen and was coordinator for the medical student teaching program at Stavanger University Hospital and in charge of the coronary care unit. His primary focus is clinical research in heart failure. Professor Dickstein is a Past-President of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. He was Chairman of the Task Forces for both the ESC 2008 Guidelines on Heart Failure and the 2010 Update of ESC guidelines on device therapy and has been a councillor on the ESC Board. He is the founder of the ESC patient information website heartfailurematters.org. He is an active member of numerous editorial boards and steering committees and is an associate editor of the European Journal of Heart Failure. Prof. Dickstein has published over 500 scientific papers and has an active interest in promoting academic cardiology.
Place of work
Stavanger University Hospital University of Bergen, Stavanger (Norway)
Loreena Hill
Heart failure nurse with prescribing authority for 14 years, and I remain clinically active. In 2015 I completed a PhD funded and was appointed in 2018 as a lecturer & post-doctoral researcher to Queen’s university, Belfast, within the School of Nursing & Midwifery. In August 2023, I was promoted to Reader. Main research interests are focused on Heart Failure, in particular patients in the palliative stage of HF and patients with an implanted device. I was UK PI for the European Interreg funded project named Passion-HF, which was completed in December 2023. Building on the success of the Passion-HF project, I am privileged to be PI for the recently commenced Horizon funded project named iCARE4CVD. In September 2022 I was awarded a BHF postdoctoral nurse fellowship, to co-design and test a digital intervention providing information and support to patients with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD). I have been a member of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology since 2018, and currently co-chair the Digital health & patient care committee (2022-2024). Finally I am an associate editor for ESC Heart Failure journal and the European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.
Place of work
Queen's University of Belfast - Belfast, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Northern Health & Social Care Trust - United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Maggie Simpson
Maggie is a Heart Failure Advanced Nurse Practitioner in NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde & a part-time Medical Student at the University of Edinburgh. Maggie is a member of the Board of the ESC Heart Failure Association & Association of CV Nurses & Allied Professions (ACNAP) & chairs the ACNAP education committee. She is also Chair of the British Adult Congenital Cardiac Nurse Association & Scottish Heart Failure Nurse Forum & elected councillor to the British Society for Heart Failure. As a medical student Maggie is the North Rep for the British Undergraduate Cardiovascular Association. Areas of interest: adult congenital heart disease, cardiac obstetrics, acute heart failure, advanced heart failure & devices.
Place of work
NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde - Glasgow, United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland
Maria Generosa Crespo-Leiro
Head, Heart Failure Section, Cardiology Service at the Complexo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña (CHUAC), Spain. Professor of Medicine, University of A Coruña (UDC) She obtained MD at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Specialization in Cardiology at Clinica Puerta de Hierro (Madrid) and PhD from Universidad Autónoma (Madrid). She served in several scientific societies: President of the Spanish Working Group on HF and HT (2003-2006); Board of Directors, International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) (2010-1013). Board member, Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC (2012-2018). Secretary, HFA Executive Committee (2016-2018). Chair, HFA Advanced HF Committee (2017-2018). Member, ESC Education Committee (2018-2020). Her main fields of research interest are HF and HT. Chair, ESC HF Long-term Registry (2013-2016), HFA scientific statement on advanced HF (2018), Spanish post-HT Tumor Registry. Co-author of the 2021 and 2023 ESC HF Guidelines. Elected Vice-president of the Spanish Society of Cardiology since Octubre 2023.
Place of work
Cardiology Service at the Complexo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña (CHUAC), Spain
Maria Teresa Tome Esteban
Prof Tome is a Consultant Cardiologist and Professor of Practice in Cardiology specializing in the diagnosis, treatment, management and counselling of inherited cardiovascular diseases and the prevention of sudden cardiac death. She graduated in 1996 in Madrid at UCM and trained as a cardiologist at Hospital de la Princesa, Madrid. She completed research for her PhD studies at St George's Medical School and UCL in London, funded by the SEC and BHF, in 2004. She became a full-time consultant cardiologist in Inherited cardiac conditions at UCLH in 2005, working at The Heart Hospital and GOSH. She has been working at St George's Hospital since 2015, where she leads specialized Inherited Cardiac Conditions clinics and is the cardiac lead of the Inherited aortic service. Her special interests include LVOTO, cardio-obstetrics, epidemiology and outcomes in cardiomyopathies, transition and adolescence care and genomic medicine.
Place of work
St George's Healthcare NHS Trust, London (United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland)
Marianna Adamo
Marianna Adamo practices in Brescia, Italy. Her top areas of expertise are Mitral Valve Regurgitation, Heart Failure, Tricuspid Regurgitation, Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), and Aortic Valve Replacement.
Her clinical research consists of co-authoring 290 peer reviewed articles and participating in 1 clinical trial in the past 15 years
Place of work
Cardiology Service at the Complexo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña (CHUAC), Spain
Mitja Lainscrak
Dr. Mitja Lainscak is Professor at Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana and does clinical practice & research at Division of Cardiology, General Hospital Murska Sobota, Slovenia. In past, he was director of Slovenian Research Agency director. His clinical and research interest is cardiovascular medicine with particular emphasis on heart failure, epidemiology, comorbidities (with particular emphasis on lung involvement), pharmacotherapy, and metabolism with body composition. For several years he is engaged with European Society of Cardiology and Heart Failure Association of the ESC boards and comittees, and is a Fellow of the HFA and of the ESC. In 2018, he was the Scientific Chairperson of the Heart Failure Association annual congress.
Professor Lainscak has published more than 310 papers and contributed to several book chapters. He is Associate Editor at Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle and ESC Heart Failure, and Editorial Board member at Clinical Research in Cardiology and Journal of Geriatric Cardiology.
Place of work
General Hospital Murska Sobota, Murska Sobota (Slovenia)
Nicolas Girerd
Nicolas GIRERD, MD, PhD, professor of Therapeutics, is a cardiologist and biostatistician currently director of the Nancy Plurithematic Clinical Investigation Center (CIC)-INSERM, France. His current research interests are mainly focused on the quantification and treatment of congestion in acute and chronic heart failure. He is the author of over 300 publications in international journals (h-index>30). He is the PI of studies focusing on congestion evaluation using lung ultrasound (p.e. AHF-CORE NCT03327532; AMBUSH NCT04741711) and is in steering committees of many academic randomized clinical trials in the field of heart failure and/or MRA therapy (p.e. EPURE TRANSPLANT NCT02490904; LEVOHEARTSHOCK NCT04020263; HYPO-ECMO NCT02754193 Levy Girerd JAMA 2022). He developed the e’VM algorithm, using machine learning, that identify distinct phenotypes able to predict long-term heart failure risk (Kobayashi, Girerd, JACC imaging, 2021).
Place of work
University Hospital of Nancy, Nancy (France)
Ovidiu Chioncel
Prof. Ovidiu Chioncel received his medical degree from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy Carol Davila, Bucharest in 1992, and earned his PhD in 2012. He received training in medical statistics (Medical Statistics and Clinical Trials, University of Leuven UZG, Belgium, 1998), echocardiography (Instituto Clinico Humanitas Milan, Italy, 1999), advanced heart failure (HF) therapies (Universitat Klinikum Munster, Germany, 2001), advanced echo techniques and cardiac computed tomography (Cardiocentro Ticino Switzerland, 2006) and heart transplant and ventricular assist devices (Sheba Medical Center, Israel, 2013).
Since 2014 he is leading ICCU and Cardiology 1st Department at Institute of Emergency for Cardiovascular Diseases, ‘Prof. C.C. Iliescu’ Bucharest, Romania. His major clinical and research interests are related to HF, cardiac imaging and emergency medicine. He is Director of the Romanian Acute Heart Failure Syndrome registry (RO-AHFS), National Registry of Acute Aortic Dissections (RENADA) and National Coordinator of EORP ESC-HF registries. Treasurer of the Heart Failure association since 2022.
Place of work
Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases Prof. C.C. Iliescu, Bucharest (Romania)
Peter Van Der Meer
Peter van der Meer is a cardiologist, chair of the Department of Experimental Cardiology and professor of Heart Failure and Translational Cardiology at the University of Groningen. Professor van der Meer received both his MD and PhD cum laude and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. He authored >300 manuscripts, has an H-index of 77 and was member of the 2022 ESC CardioOncology guidelines and is member of the ESC/HFA working group on PeriPartum CardioMyopathy. He is a member of several steering committees of large phase 3 trials. His research is funded by national and international grants including an ERC CoG grant. His research group consists of PhD students and post-docs with various backgrounds (biologists, medical doctors and biomedical-engineers) working on translational research topics. His research focusses on understanding the susceptibility to develop heart failure and on exploring novel treatment targets and therapies.
Place of work
University Medical Centre Groningen, Groningen (Netherlands (The))
Pietro Ameri
After graduating in Medicine in 2006, Pietro Ameri completed the residency and received his PhD in 2014 at the University of Genova, Italy. He is now Associate Professor in Cardiovascular Diseases at the University of Genova / IRCCS San Martino Policlinic Hospital, where he directs the Heart Failure and Pulmonary Hypertension clinical programs, as well as a translational research laboratory. Prof. Ameri's primary interest is heart failure. He is also involved in cardio-oncology, especially with respect to the interplay between heart failure, cancer, and anti-cancer therapies. If he was asked to bring a book, a movie, and a song with him on a desert island, today he would pick The catcher in the rye, The big Lebowski, and Born to run.
Place of work
University of Genova - Genoa, Italy
Sophie Van Linthout
Prof. Van Linthout has completed her studies in biological engineering at the Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (1998) and finished her PhD in medical science, at the Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (2002). Here after, she was a Marie-Curie Fellow of the European Commission in Italy for 1.5 years. From 2004 on, she worked as a Post-Doc at the Department of Cardiology & Pneumology, Charité, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany, where her research was mainly directed at finding strategies to improve diabetic cardiopathy and diabetes mellitus-associated endothelial dysfunction. Since 2010 she works at the Berlin-Brandenburg (now, Berlin Institute of Health) Center for Regenerative Therapies at the Charité, University of Medicine, Berlin; Germany, where she leads the working group on translational immunocardiology. Her research is focused on exploring the role of the innate immunity, inflammation and its bidirectional relationship with fibroblasts, in the pathogenesis of non-ischemic heart failure with the main emphasis on inflammatory cardiomyopathy and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. Prof. Van Linthout is HFA Board member for the basic science section and the chair of the HFA Scientific Committee on Basic & Translational Research.
Languages
Flemish (Dutch), French, English, Italian, German
Place of work
Berlin Institute of Health Center for Regenerative Therapies – Charité, Berlin, Germany
Teresa Lopez Fernandez
Teresa López-Fernández, MD, leads the Cardio-Oncology Unit, at La Paz University Hospital, Madrid, Spain. Her clinical and research focus includes mechanisms, diagnosis, and treatment of cardiac complications of cancer therapies and cardiac imaging Dr. López-Fernández is the chair-elected of the ESC Council of Cardio-Oncology. She is the past-chair of the Spanish Cardio Oncology working group and the vice president of the International Cardio-Oncology Society. Teresa is co-chairing the 2022 ESC Guidelines on cardio-oncology with Dr. Alexander Lyon.
Place of work
La Paz University Hospital, Madrid (Spain)
Wilfried Mullens
Prof Wilfried Mullens is a heart failure clinician with a strong commitment to translational research translating new mechanistic insights into answering questions of clinical interest. He has been president of the Belgian Working Group on Heart Failure and serving as board member of European Heart Failure Association (HFA) and HF 2023 Congress Chair..
Place of work
Hospital Oost-Limburg (ZOL) - Genk, Belgium
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