Dennis M. McNamara, MD

Chair

Leslie T. Cooper, Jr., MD

Co-Chair

Dr. Leslie T. Cooper, Jr., is a general cardiologist and the chair of the Mayo Clinic Enterprise Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, as well as chair of the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Florida. Dr. Cooper’s clinical interests and research focus on clinical and translational studies of rare and undiagnosed cardiomyopathies, myocarditis, and inflammatory cardiac and vascular diseases, such as giant cell myocarditis, cardiac sarcoidosis, eosinophilic myocarditis, and Takayasu’s arteritis. He has published over 130 original peer- reviewed papers, as well as contributing to and editing books on myocarditis.

Arvind Bhimaraj, MD

Dr. Arvind Bhimaraj is a specialist in Heart Failure and Transplantation Cardiology and is the Associate Professor of Cardiology, Institute for Academic Medicine, at Houston Methodist and at Weill Cornell Medical College, NYC. He has been Co-Director of the Heart Failure Research Laboratory at Houston Methodist since 2016. His area of focus is anti- fibrotic mechanisms and how to promote recovery of a damaged heart. Dr. Bhimaraj was a Heart Failure Fellow at the Cleveland Clinic from July 2010 to September 2011.

Wai Hong Wilson Tang, MD

Dr. Wai Hong Wilson Tang is the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology specialist at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. Dr. Tang is also the Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Clinical Genomics; Research Director, and staff cardiologist in the Section of Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation Medicine in the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at the Cleveland Clinic. He attended and graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1996, having over 23 years of diverse experience, especially in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology.

Peter Liu, MD

Dr. Peter Liu is the Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President, Research, of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, and Professor of Medicine and Physiology at the University of Toronto and University of Ottawa. He was the former Scientific Director of the Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health at the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the major federal funding agency for health research in Canada. Prior to that role, he was the inaugural Director of the Heart & Stroke/Lewar Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research at University of Toronto. Dr. Liu received his MD from the University of Toronto, and postgraduate training at Harvard University.

Carsten Tschöpe, MD

Dr. Carsten Tschöpe is Professor of Medicine and Cardiology. Vice Director of the Department of Internal Medicine and Cardiology, Charité Hospital, Freie Universität Berlin. He received his doctorate in medicine in 1993 and has over 140 peer – reviewed publications, including overview and book articles, and 120 international original articles. His research interests include inflammatory cardiomyopathy, diabetic cardiopathy, and ischemic cardiopathy. He also includes diastolic dysfunction, endothelial dysfunction, peptide systems, and experimental and clinical studies in cardiology and stem cells in his research studies.

Matthias Friedrich, MD

Dr. Matthias Friedrich is Full Professor with the Departments of Medicine and Diagnostic Radiology at the McGill University in Montreal and Chief, Cardiovascular Imaging at the McGill University Health Centre. He is also Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University in Germany. Dr. Friedrich earned his MD at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. He completed his training as an internist and cardiologist at the Charité University Medicine Center, Humboldt University in Berlin. Dr. Friedrich founded one of the first large Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance centres in Germany at the Charité Hospital in Berlin.

Edimar Bocchi, MD

Dr. Edimar Bocchi trained as a cardiologist at the Heart Institute (InCor) Of São Paulo University Medical School and obtained his PhD at the São Paulo University Medical School. Currently, he serves as the Head of Heart Failure Clinics and Heart Failure Team at Heart Institute (Incor) of Hospital das Clinicas of São Paulo University Medical School. His areas of clinical and research interest include heart failure, Chagas heart disease, cardio-oncology, heart transplantation, and exercise in heart failure.

Yaron Arbel, MD

Dr. Yaron Arbel is a Cardiologist and Director of the CardioVascular Research Center (CVRC) at the Tel Aviv “Sourasky” Medical Center. Dr. Arbel has been working as a researcher/advisor/medical director in various fields of medicine: Heart failure (Corassist- diastolic heart failure), interventional cardiology (Angioslide- preventing distal embolization), myocardial infarction (LBT-low level laser activation of bone marrow), medical informatics and wearables (CUBX- contactless hemodynamic assessment).

Steven Grasso

Mr. Grasso began his career on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in 1993. He joined Stuart Frankel & Co. as an institutional sales trader in 1999. As Director of Institutional Sales for Stuart Frankel & Co., Steven has worked closely with some of the largest mutual funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and hedge funds in the world directly from the floor of the Stock Exchange. Over his 27-year career, Steven has actively participated in various Stock Exchange committees ranging from allocating new listings to designated market makers to developing standardized tests that the floor community uses for continuing education. Steven closely follows the Washington D.C./Markets connection, using his extensive Capitol Hill and SEC relationships to better inform his clients on policy changes and regulation.