Chairperson-Elect
Professor Stefan Kaab is a translational cardiologist and electrophysiologist with research expertise in familial arrhythmia syndromes, atrial fibrillation, sudden cardiac death and congestive heart failure. He founded the LMU specialised centre for familial arrhythmia syndromes and sudden cardiac death in 2001.
He managed the Munich node within the German National Genome Research Network (NGFN) continuously from 2001 through its final year in 2013.
Professor Kaab has been coordinating and supervising ECG efforts within MONICA/KORA since 2001 and is the PI of the biobank within the German AFNet.
He is co-investigator within the international CHARGE genetics consortia in atrial fibrillation, ECG and Sudden Cardiac Death.
He has published more than 230 peer-reviewed original articles on cardiac arrhythmias, from molecular mechanisms to clinical outcomes with a focus on atrial fibrillation and sudden cardiac death (h-index: 69).
He is also course director of the interdisciplinary cardiovascular course at LMU medical school and member of the committee for research development and the clinician scientist program at LMU.
Treasurer/Secretary
Professor Kristina Hermann Haugaa, MD, PhD, FESC, Cardiologist, Head of Outpatient Clinic and Genetic Cardiac Diseases, Department of Cardiology, Oslo University Hospital, Rikshospitalet. Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oslo.
Professor at Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.
Prof. Kristina Haugaa is the director for the ProCardio Centre for research based innovation, funded by the Research Council of Norway. Her research is focused on cardiac genetic disorders developing risk stratifying tools for sudden cardiac death, management of genetic cardiac diseases and the impact of exercise.
Prof. Haugaa has served as an elected European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) Board Member (2018-2020) and as elected Secretary of the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) for the mandate 2020-2022.
Communications Coordinator
Professor Antoine Bondue, MD, PhD, FESC, Hôpital Erasme & IRIBHM, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Prof. Antoine Bondue is the head of the Department of Cardiology and the Director for Rare Diseases at the Erasme Hospital in Brussels (Université Libre de Bruxelles), the president of the Belgian Heart Ligue, and the past-chair of the Belgian Working Group on Adult Congenital Heart Disease (Belgian Society of Cardiology). He is also the chair of the Belgian Council on Cardiogenomics.
Prof. Antoine Bondue acquired expertise in cardiovascular development, stem cell biology, and cardiovascular genetics. His main research interests are focused on congenital heart disease, cardiomyopathy, and pulmonary arterial hypertension.
Liaison Officer
Associate Professor Juan Pablo Kaski MD(Res) FRCP, FESC
Dr. Kaski is Associate Professor of Paediatric Inherited Cardiology at the UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science, where he leads the UCL Centre for Paediatric Inherited and Rare Cardiovascular Diseases, and Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), London, UK. He is the Director of the GOSH Centre for Inherited Cardiovascular Diseases. His clinical and research interests are focused on the clinical and genetic characterisation of inherited cardiovascular disease and sudden cardiac death in childhood.
He is immediate past-Chair of the Association for European Paediatric Cardiology (AEPC) Working Group on Genetics, Basic Science and Myocardial Disease and sits on the Executive Board of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Cardiomyopathy and Myocarditis Registry Programme and the ESC Council on Cardiovascular Genomics. He leads an international paediatric HCM consortium of over 45 centres, which was responsible for the development of the first sudden death risk prediction model for childhood HCM.
Ordinary Nucleus Members
Pablo Garcia-Pavia
Dr García-Pavia is the director of the Inherited Cardiac Diseases and Heart Failure Unit at the Department of Cardiology of Hospital Universitario Puerta de Hierro in Madrid, Spain. The Unit is designed as national reference unit (CSUR) for inherited cardiovascular diseases by the Spanish Ministry of Health and also acts as a European reference center for rare or complex cardiovascular diseases (ERN). He is also PI Goup Leader at the Spanish National Cardiovascular Research Center (CNIC) in Madrid, Spain.
His areas of research include heart amyloidosis and cardiomyopathies. He is former member of ESC Council on Basic Research, former member of the Nucleus of ESC working group on myocardial and pericardial diseases, and former president of Spanish Society of Cardiology’s working group on inherited cardiac diseases. He has published >200 articles in peer-reviewed journals including European Heart Journal, J Am Coll Cardiol, Circulation, Nature Communications, Nature Medicine and The Lancet.
Jeanette Erdmann
Institute for Cardiogenetics, University of Lübeck (Germany)
Prof. Jeanette Erdmann is DZHK professor and head of the Institute for Cardiogenetics at the University of Lübeck.
Over the last 15 years, she has been involved in identifying almost all recently identified coronary artery disease and myocardial infarction risk loci by genome-wide association and large-scale exome‐sequencing studies (starting with the identification of 9p21 in 2007). The accomplishments of her work will certainly lead to a better pathophysiological understanding of CAD/MI and open doors for new strategies of prevention and therapy.
In recognition of her contribution to elucidating the genetic causes of CAD, she was elected to be a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2021.
Luis Rocha Lopes, MD, PhD, FESC
Dr Rocha Lopes is a Consultant Cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre working in the Inherited Cardiac Disease Unit and Cardiac MRI Unit and Honorary Associate Professor at the Institute of Cardiovascular Science, University College London. He is cardiology lead for the North Thames Genomic Laboratory Hub.
He finished his cardiology training in 2009 and sub-specialised in multi-modality cardiac imaging and inherited cardiac disease. He achieved his PhD from University College London in 2015, with a thesis focusing on genotype-phenotype associations in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
He was chairman of the Portuguese Working Group of Myocardial and Pericardial diseases 2013-2017. He is a recipient of an MRC UK Clinical Academic Partnership award (2019) to fund research on the causes of "genotype-negative" HCM. His major research interests include the use of advanced imaging in the construction of new genotype-phenotype models and the discovery of new genetic causes of cardiomyopathy.
Cornelia van Duijn
Professor Cornelia van Duijn is Professor of Epidemiology at NDPH and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.
She studied Human Nutrition and Mathematical Statistics at the Agricultural University of Wageningen and Genetics and Epidemiology at the Erasmus University Medical School.
Her main research is within the Oxford Big Data Institute focuses on large-scale –omics studies of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer, Parkinson and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and ophthalmological disorders including glaucoma, age related macular degeneration and myopia.
Further studies include systemic vascular, endocrine and gastrointestinal pathology that is relevant for brain and ocular function.
Leader of two major consortia: the Horizon2020 CoSTREAM consortium aiming to understand the link between stroke and Alzheimer disease and the MEMORABEL Gut-Brain consortium aiming to unravel the role of the gut microbiome in Alzheimer disease and brain pathology.
Our mission: To reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease.