Olafunke O. Ajijola, Pharm.D, CPP

Dr. Ajijola is a Clinical Pharmacist Practitioner who serves as a pharmacist specialist at Atrium Health - Sanger Health and Vascular Institute. She works as part of a multidisciplinary team serving patients in the Advanced Heart Failure & Transplant clinic. Dr. Ajijola oversees medication management, solves medication related problems while assessing for drug efficacy, safety, and cost effectiveness for patients with advanced heart failure, pulmonary arterial hypertension, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CM), cardiac sarcoidosis, cardiac oncology, anticoagulation, and antiarrhythmics. She is an active member of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). Dr. Ajijola is well recognized for her unwavering commitment to improving health outcomes and promoting wellness within her community.

Sessions: Panel Discussion: Role of APPs & Pharmacists in CMI Care 

Anna Axelsson

Anna Axelsson Raja received her medical degree from University of Copenhagen in 2008 and Ph.D degree in 2015. She worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School Boston in 2014-2015 and is presently working as a specialist registrar at Department of Cardiology, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen. Dr Axelsson Raja’s interests include clinical and translational research in cardiology, with focus on cardiomyopathies, genetics, and cardiovascular imaging and she has served as an investigator on several clinical trials within the fields of inherited cardiomyopathies and heart failure. Dr Axelsson Raja is a member of the Steering committee of The Copenhagen Baby Heart Study and serves as academic supervisor of six past and present Ph.D students, as well as several graduate students, within the CBHS. Dr. Axelsson Raja’s ambitions are to continue working with inherited cardiomyopathies using a bench-to-bedside approach integrating advances in basic research with clinical

Sessions:  Lecture: What are the right clinical outcomes to study in nHCM? 

Michael Ayers, MD

Michael Ayers, MD, is a sports cardiologist caring for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients, a genetic condition causing thickening of the heart muscle. While hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is one of the most common conditions diagnosed in competitive athletes, Ayers treats any cardiac symptoms or concerns, inherited cardiac conditions, or incidental cardiac findings in a broad spectrum of athletes, ranging from recreational runners and cyclists to professional athletes. Trained in advanced lipidology with a clinical focus on preventive cardiology, he also manages patients with a strong family history of premature heart attacks, cholesterol or lipid disorders, or high individual risk for cardiac events.

Ayers has advanced imaging expertise, with board certifications in advanced echocardiography, cardiac computed tomography (CT), and nuclear cardiology. He utilizes these modalities in the care of all of his patients, but they are particularly useful in caring for patients with advanced valvular or structural heart disease. He is also interested in managing cancer patients who are receiving potentially cardio-toxic chemotherapies, applying primary prevention and advanced imaging training to protect their hearts during their cancer treatments.

Sessions:  Lecture: CMIs didn’t work for my oHCM patient - what’s next? 

Robyn Bryde, MD 

Robyn Bryde, MD completed cardiology fellowship at Mayo Clinic and is completing an advanced fellowship in Sports Cardiology and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy at Morristown Medical Center, Morristown, NJ — under the direction of Matthew Martinez, MD. With this position, Dr. Bryde is involved in cutting-edge research trials studying novel therapies available to patients with HCM. Upon completion of the advanced fellowship, she plans to move to Boise, Idaho where she will bring her unique set of skills to the Mountain West.

Sessions:  Lecture: Basics of HCM diagnosis; Panel Discussion: FIT Careers 

Melissa Burroughs, MD

Melissa Burroughs is a noninvasive cardiologist at Wellstar Health System With a clinical emphasis on heart failure and inherited cardiomyopathies, Melissa also has expertise in global health, health inequality and environmental health. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Association of Black Cardiologists and the board of Duke University Cooperative Cardiovascular Society. Melissa is an active member of the American Heart Association, serving on the Scientific Sessions Programming Committee. She is an advocate for environmental justice for communities of color and is on the Board of Scientific Counselors for the Environmental Protection Agency. Melissa has conducted clinical research in the United States, Puerto Rico, Peru and Brazil and has co-authored 23 scientific publications. She is an associate editor at the American Heart Journal.

Melissa has a passion for mentorship. She has mentored college students, medical students, medical residents and cardiology fellows in clinical research and clinical medicine. She also is committed to promoting innovation in health care, and has served as a medical advisor to Lantheus, Aeon Global Health Clinical Laboratory and Simple Health Kit.

Melissa was born in St. Louis, MO and raised in Atlanta, GA. She graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology and Human Biology from Emory University. Melissa graduated cum laude from Harvard Medical School. She trained in internal medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and completed cardiovascular medicine training at Duke University where she also received a Master of Science in Global Health.

Sessions:  Panel Discussions: FIT Careers 

Caroline J Coats MB BS, BSc, MSc, PhD, FRCP, DHMSA

Dr Coats, a graduate of Imperial College School of Medicine, is a Consultant Cardiologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. As Lead Clinician for National Network for Inherited Cardiac Conditions, she has played a pivotal role in guiding development of hub and spoke services and national audit in Scotland. Her clinical research centres on heart failure, cardiovascular genetics, biomarkers, and imaging with a focus on diagnosis and treatment of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. She holds a Career Researcher Fellowship from the Chief Scientific Office and serves as Principal Investigator for several global clinical trials. She has a long-standing interest in History of Medicine and is Archivist to the British Cardiovascular Society.

Sessions: The future of care for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy 

Alex De Feria, MD

Alejandro de Feria, MD, is a cardiologist at the Penn Heart and Vascular Center. His clinical area of focus is inherited and genetic forms of cardiovascular disease. He specializes in hypertrophic (HCM) and dilated (DCM) cardiomyopathy, along with arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC), left ventricular noncompaction (LVNC), and other forms of nonischemic cardiomyopathy.

Sessions: Lecture: Defining obstruction - how and where to look - symptoms and echo? 

Milind Desai, MD

Milind Desai, MD MBA, is the Director of Clinical Operations of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. He holds the Haslam Family Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine. He has dual appointments in the Departments of Cardiovascular Medicine (Section of Cardiovascular Imaging) and Radiology.

Dr. Desai is the Director of Center for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, the Medical Director of the Center for Aortic Diseases, the Medical Director for Center for Radiation Heart Disease and an integral part of the Center for Valvular heart disease. He is an expert in multimodality cardiovascular imaging, having achieved the highest level of proficiency in all imaging modalities, including cardiac MRI, cardiac CT, echocardiography and nuclear cardiology. In addition, he serves on the multiple Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute councils, including Executive Council, Operations Council and Research Council. In addition, he serves on the Cleveland Clinic Research Compliance Committee.

Sessions:  Lecture: Cases that don’t fit the guidelines; Oral Abstract Presentations 

Mark Drazner, MD, MSc, FHFSA

Mark H. Drazner, MD, MSc is the Clinical Chief of Cardiology and holds the James M. Wooten Chair in Cardiology at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. His research interests include the utility of the clinical examination in heart failure and the progression from cardiac hypertrophy to failure. He currently serves on the Heart Failure Society of America Board of Directors and Executive Committee. He was the inaugural recipient of the L. David Hillis Award for Excellence in Teaching from the UT Southwestern Cardiology Fellowship program. In 2018, he received the Laennec Master Clinician Award from the AHA.

Sessions:  Society collaboration to improve HCM care: Advocacy, education and expanding access 

Mariko Harper, MD, FACC

Dr. Harper serves as the Medical Director of The Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. Under her direction, she has created a regional center providing an individualized approach to the diagnosis, genetic testing, advanced cardiac imaging and medical/surgical management of patients with HCM. Dr. Harper has authored and published multiple peer reviewed articles and book chapters in a wide range of topics in cardiology. Following her passion for patient education and cardiovascular disease prevention, she is also one of the course directors for the "Food Is Medicine" continuing medical education lecture series at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. Dr. Harper believes in patient-centered and patient-driven care. She emphasizes the importance of shared clinical decision making, with open dialogue between the patient and the entirety of the patient's multidisciplinary care team. Dr. Harper has been recognized as a Seattle Met Top Doctor in 2021 and 2022.

Sessions: Lecture: Myosin Inhibitors: have we reached the peak or do we have miles to go? 

Adam Helms, MD

Dr. Helms is a cardiologist and Assistant Professor at the Cardiovascular Center.  While interested in all aspects of cardiology, he has a primary interest in inherited cardiomyopathy and inherited arrhythmia disorders.  Helping patients work through their experience with a heart condition and return to their quality of life inspires Dr. Helms. Having a heart condition can be frightening, and Dr. Helms enjoys working closely with patients to help them understand their medical problems and feel empowered about their medical care. Though he truly enjoys the science of medicine, he finds working with patients from all walks of life to understand their health conditions to be the most rewarding part of his job. Before coming to UMHS for his fellowship in cardiology, Dr. Helms studied at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the University of Virginia Hospitals.  In addition to his cardiology training, Dr. Helms also completed a Masters in Human Genetics at the University of Michigan.

Sessions: Lecture: Gene therapy - What is it and is it ready for prime time?

Carolyn Ho, MD

Dr. Carolyn Yung Ho is the medical director of the Cardiovascular Genetics Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH). A cardiovascular medicine specialist, she is also an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School (HMS).

She received her medical degree from HMS. She then completed an internal medicine residency and a cardiology fellowship at BWH. Dr. Ho is board certified in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Ho’s clinical interests include cardiomyopathy, echocardiography, and cardiovascular genetics. The author of over 30 peer-reviewed publications, her research focuses on characterizing early phenotypes of sarcomere mutations in inherited cardiomyopathies and developing clinical trials to diminish the progression of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Her research has received support from the American College of Cardiology and National Institutes of Health.

Sessions:  Lecture: Guidelines Gossip! Top Takeaways ; Panel Discussion Q&A 

Bradley Lander, MD 

Bradley Lander, MD, is a cardiologist with expertise in sports cardiology and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. He is the Director of Sports Cardiology and a member of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Leadership Board at University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute. In this role, he serves as the consultant cardiologist for the Cleveland Browns, Cleveland Monsters and Cleveland Ballet. Dr. Lander earned his medical degree with honors from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where he served as the peer-elected chapter president of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honors Medical Society. He completed an internal medicine residency at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, followed by both cardiovascular disease and advanced echocardiography fellowships at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York. In addition, he completed an advanced fellowship in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and sports cardiology at the Chanin T. Mast Center for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey with international expert Dr. Matthew Martinez. Dr. Lander specializes in the care of athletes and highly active individuals with known or suspected heart disease and patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Dr. Lander cares for athletes across the spectrum of abilities including professional athletes. He has served as faculty for the Care of the Athletic Heart Meeting of the American College of Cardiology and participated as a physician on the cardiovascular screening team for the National Basketball Players Association Top 100 Camp.

Sessions:  Panel Discussion: FIT Careers 

Martin Maron, MD 

Dr. Martin Maron is Director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center and Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center and the Chanin T. Mast Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center in Morristown Medical Center. His research interests are the diagnosis and management of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy including the role of cardiovascular magnetic resonance in assessment of patients with HCM and novel drug therapy to modify the disease. Dr. Maron has co-authored over 200 original publications on HCM including in New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, Circulation and Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Sessions:  Session II: HCM management in 2024 

Matt Martinez, MD

Dr. Matthew Martinez is director of Atlantic Health System Sports Cardiology at Morristown Medical Center and a nationally recognized expert in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM). He specializes in identifying and treating athletes who have underlying heart issues such as arrhythmia or HCM, a hereditary medical condition where the walls of the heart become excessively thick, obstructing blood flow from leaving the heart. Dr. Martinez sees patients at Morristown Medical Center’s Chanin T. Mast Center for the Treatment of Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, a center dedicated exclusively to the diagnosis and treatment of HCM patients, a first-in-kind, multidisciplinary HCM program in New Jersey.

Board-certified and fellowship-trained in cardiovascular disease at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, Dr. Martinez serves as a cardiology consultant for professional sports including acting as the League cardiologist for Major League Soccer and team cardiologist for the New York Jets. He also maintains a thriving practice evaluating structural heart disease in both symptomatic and asymptomatic athletes using cardiac imaging, including echocardiography, stress testing, cardiac CT and cardiac MRI.

Sessions:  Session I: The new HCM Guidelines 

James Moon, MD

James is CMR lead at Barts Heart Centre, Medical director of Chenies Mews Imaging Centre and CEO of Mycardium AI Ltd, a UCL spinout delivering cardiovascular corelab AI analytics. Formerly, he set up and lead the Heart Hospital Imaging Centre. The centre and its affiliated CMR services are the largest in the world (28,000 scans a year).

Trained at Cambridge and Oxford, his MD at Imperial was ‘myocardial tissue characterization by CMR’. His research group have particular interests in heart muscle and conditions that affect it such as cardiomyopathy, Fabry, amyloid, valve disease, cardio-oncology, athleticism and aging which he measures using developed techniques (LGE, T1 mapping, perfusion mapping). A major current work program is measuring the heart using developed AI that exceeds human performance. He has published more than 500 papers and works inpartnership with Pharma to develop surrogate endpoints for clincical trials including first in man studies. Another interest is in making scans faster/cheaper and inimproving/maintaining quality. He set up and led the international T1 mapping development group, mrimypacemaker and CMR for lower middle income countries.

Sessions:  Lecture: Rethinking precision HCM diagnosis from morphology to genetics 

Iacopo Olivotto, MD

Dr. Iacopo Olivotto is Head of the Cardiomyopathy Unit and Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Careggi University Hospital in Florence, Italy. Over the last two decades, his main clinical and research interests have includes various aspects of cardiomyopathies, with special focus on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Dr. Olivotto has been involved in the design and execution of randomized studies in genetic cardiomyopathies, and has served as the lead investigator of the recently presented Explorer HCM trial. He has co-authored over 250 papers in international, peer-reviewed journals.

Sessions:  Lecture: Novel therapies for oHCM: novel septal reduction approaches and new small

Anjali Owens, MD

Anjali Tiku Owens, MD, is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the founding Director of the Penn Familial Cardiomyopathy Program, Director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy clinic and was appointed the Medical Director of the Penn Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease in 2015.

Dr. Owens completed her medical degree and undergraduate degree at Duke University. She completed internship, residency, chief medical residency, and fellowships in Heart Failure and Transplantation and in Cardiovascular Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She also completed the Clinical Research Certificate Program at the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Owens joined the faculty of the Heart Failure and Transplantation Program at Penn in 2011.

Sessions:  Lecture: Guidelines Gaps: What DON’T the guidelines have data support or fail to address? 

Victoria Parikh, MD

Dr. Parikh is the director of the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease (SCICD) which is one of the largest of its kind in the country. SCICD integrates clinical and basic science with the expert care of patients with genetic cardiovascular conditions (e.g., cardiomyopathies, arrhythmias and vascular diseases). Dr. Parikh's own clinical practice and laboratory are focused on the genetics of cardiomyopathies and their associated arrhythmogenic substrates. She completed clinical cardiology fellowship at Stanford School of Medicine and her medical residency at the University of California, San Francisco. Funded by multiple research grants from the NIH, her lab seeks to identify novel mechanisms and therapeutic technologies for genetic cardiomyopathy as well as better understand the natural histories of patients affected by these diseases.

Sessions: Opening Remarks; Session IV. The future of HCM care 

Dermot Phelan, MD

Dermot Phelan, MD, PhD, FASE, FACC is a Medical Director of Cardiovascular Imaging, Director of Sports Cardiology and Co-Director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute. Previously, Dr. Phelan established and ran the Sports Cardiology Center at the Cleveland Clinic for eight years. He is the team cardiologist for the Carolina Panthers and the Cardiology Consultant to the National Football League Scouting Combine annually. Additionally, he is a member of the Cardiac Screening Advisory Committee for both the NFL and the NBA. Dr. Phelan’s passion about the cardiac care of athletes extends beyond professional players to athletes of all skill level and ages.

Sessions:  APP, FITs and practitioners just getting started in HCM care - HCM 101 

Nosheen Reza, MD

Nosheen Reza, MD, FACC, FHFSA is a cardiologist and translational researcher at the University of Pennsylvania focusing on advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology and cardiovascular genetics and phenomics.

She obtained her medical degree from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 2012 and completed her internal medicine residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 2015. She then completed her Cardiovascular Disease fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. At Penn, Dr. Reza pursued additional scholarship in genomic medicine as an NIH T32-funded postdoctoral fellow and in healthcare quality as a Penn Benjamin & Mary Siddons Measey Fellow in Quality Improvement and Patient Safety. She completed her final year of clinical training at Penn in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology and joined the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania in July 2020. As an Assistant Professor of Medicine, she cares for patients in the Penn Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease and in the Section of Heart Failure, Transplantation, and Mechanical Support. Dr. Reza is also an Assistant Program Director of the Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship and the Director of the Penn Women in Cardiology program.

Sessions:  Panel Discussion: FIT Careers 

Ethan Rowin, MD

Ethan Rowin, MD is Associate Director of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center at Lahey Hospital & Medical Center and a recognized expert in HCM with 10 years of clinical experience. He specializes in cardiac imaging, including MRI for HCM, as well as the management of atrial fibrillation which is particularly common in this disease. His clinical research has been voluminous, now with 130 publications defining the clinical presentation, course, natural history, and modern treatment of HCM. Dr. Rowin was named a Boston Magazine “Top Doctor” in 2021.

Sessions:  Lecture: Basics of arrhythmia 

Heidi Salisbury,  RN, MSN, CNS-BC, ACGN

Heidi Salisbury joined Stanford Health Care as a bedside nurse in the coronary care unit in 2001. In 2006, she co-founded the Stanford Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease (SCICD) and is the Program Operations Coordinator. As a Clinical Nurse Specialist, board-certified in genetics, Heidi is dedicated to mentoring nurses, genetic counselors, and physician fellows to develop the clinical skills and gain the knowledge base necessary to expertly manage patients with inherited heart disease. Heidi is passionate about training the next generation of providers to think genetically when approaching the care of this population. Heidi advocates for building programmatic infrastructure that supports a continuum of expert-level nursing care through the individual lifespan and across the generations of a family. Heidi has a background in exercise physiology and cardiac rehabilitation from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. She completed graduate and post-graduate work in cardiovascular nursing science at San Francisco State/UCSF. Heidi is active in leadership roles with the American Heart Association, the International Society of Nursing and Genomics, the Preventative Care Nursing Association and Stanford Health Care’s APP Institute. 

Sessions: Panel Discussion: Role of APPs & Pharmacists in CMI Care 

Andrew Wang, MD

Andrew Wang, MD is a Professor of Medicine at Duke University Health System in Durham, NC and serves as the Vice Chief for Cardiology. He received his medical degree at Duke, internal medical residency training at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and cardiology fellowship training at Duke. His clinical and research interests are focused on hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) and structural heart diseases. Since 2003, he has directed the Duke HCM clinic, part of the Adult Cardiovascular Genetics Clinic and an HCMA Center of Excellence. He has been actively involved in clinical trials and registries in HCM, including serving on steering committees for recent and ongoing trials.

Sessions:  Novel therapies for oHCM: novel septal reduction approaches and new small 

Omar Wever-Pinzon, MD, FACC

Dr. Wever-Pinzon is an Associate Professor of Medicine and is the Cardiac Director, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Program Center of Excellence at University of Utah. He received his medical degree from the University of Panama. Dr. Wever-Pinzon completed his Internal Medicine Residency, followed by a fellowship in Advanced Cardiac Imaging at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center-University Hospital of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City. In 2010, he joined the Cardiology Investigator track at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he completed his training in Cardiovascular Disease. In 2015, he completed his training in Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology at the New York Presbyterian Hospital-Columbia University Medical Center in New York City.  Dr. Wever-Pinzon's primary clinical and academic interests are focused on the development of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Program at the University of Utah. The goals of this program are to improve the clinical management of patients with this unique condition and to advance the understanding of this inherited cardiac disease through collaborative research efforts.

Sessions: Who still needs access to expert HCM care and how do we get it to them?