Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Consultant in Cardiovascular Diseases and Internal Medicine. His past positions include The W. Proctor Harvey Teaching Professor of Cardiology and Chief of the Division of Cardiology at Georgetown University Medical Center. Dr. Gersh received his MB, ChB, from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He received his Doctor of Philosophy Degree from Oxford University where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Dr. Gersh’s wide interests include the natural history and therapy of acute and chronic coronary artery disease, clinical electrophysiology and in particular atrial fibrillation, sudden cardiac death and syncope, cardiac stem cell therapy, and the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease in the developing world. He has published 847 manuscripts and 141 book chapters. (h-index 111) Dr. Gersh is the editor of 15 books and is on the editorial board of 25 journals including Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Nature Cardiovascular Medicine, and The European Heart Journal (Deputy Editor) He is also Editor-in-Chief of UpToDate in Cardiology.

He was a member of the Advisory Board of the Reynolds Foundation, a Past Chairman of the Council of Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association, a member of the World Heart Federation’s Scientific and Policy Initiatives Committee (SPIC), and a former Member of the Board of Trustees of the American College of Cardiology. He has served on the Steering Committees and Data Safety Monitoring Boards of multiple clinical trials, sponsored by the National Lung and Blood Institute and other organizations. Dr. Gersh is a member of the Advisory Board of the Hatter Cardiovascular Research Institute, University of Cape Town. He is currently Chairman of the WHO Cardiovascular Working Group on ICD 11 Reclassification. Dr. Gersh is a member of the Association of University Cardiologists and a member of Medscape Business of Medicine.

Dr. Gersh’s honors include the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award, Teacher of the Year Award from the Division of Cardiovascular Diseases Mayo Clinic, and numerous Visiting Professorships and Invited Lectures both nationally and internationally including the 2009 Henry Russek ACC lecture, Rene Laennec Invited Lecture and Silver Medal of the ESC (2010),the William McDonald lectureship to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, the Silberberg Memorial Lecture at the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, the Criscitiello Visiting Professor Lecture at Tufts Medical Center, the Thomas W. Smith Lecture at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the Hatter Award for “Advancement in the Cardiovascular Science” from the University College London and the University of Cape Town, and the Max Holzman Lecture at the University of Zurich. He is an Honorary Member/Fellow of the South African Cardiac Society and the South African Heart Association, the Sociedad Chilena De Cardiologia Y Cirugia Cardiovascular, the Cardiac Society of India, and the British Cardiac Society. He is an Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. In 2014 he was named in the Thomson Reuters list of individuals with the greatest number of cited scientific papers 2002-2012.

Dr. Gersh was the 2004 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award of the AHA Council of Clinical Cardiology and the 2007 recipient of the ACC Distinguished Service Award. He received the degree of Ph.D. (honoris causa) from The University of Coimbra, Portugal in 2005. Dr. Gersh is the recipient of the 2012 James B. Herrick award of the AHA, and in 2013 he was designated Master of the American College of Cardiology. At ESC in 2013 he was designated as one of four “legends of modern cardiology”. Dr. Gersh is the 2014 recipient of the Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award.

Dr. Dharam J. Kumbhani, MD, SM, MRCP, FACC, FAHA, FSCAI is currently Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. He is an interventional cardiologist, and his practice specializes in transradial and complex coronary interventions, transcatheter aortic valve implantation, endovascular interventions and adult structural heart disease interventions.

Dr. Kumbhani received his medical doctorate from Grant Medical College/Sir J. J. Group of Hospitals with Distinction. He completed a Masters in Science with a concentration in clinical epidemiology at Harvard University. His internship and residency in internal medicine were performed at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and his cardiovascular training was at Cleveland Clinic. He completed fellowships in interventional cardiology, advanced structural and endovascular interventions, as well as a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he was also Instructor in Medicine/Cardiology.

Dr. Kumbhani is an internationally recognized name in the field of outcomes-based and quality-of-care research. His research particularly focuses on acute coronary syndromes, percutaneous coronary interventions, and peripheral vascular disease. He has authored or co-authored more than 60 articles in medical journals such as JAMA, JACC and Circulation. He has received numerous awards and grants for his research. Dr. Kumbhani is an elected member of the American College of Epidemiology, the Sigma Xi Research Society and the Royal College of Physicians, UK. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Cardiosource for the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the Get With the Guidelines Scientific Committee and Coronary Artery Disease clinical work group of the American Heart Association (AHA). He is a core member of the ACC Task Force on Clinical Expert Consensus Documents.

Jagat Narula, MD, PhD, MACC is Professor of Medicine and Philip J. and Harriet L. Goodhart Chair in Cardiology, and the Director of Cardiovascular Imaging Program in Mount Sinai’s Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute and the Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis Center for Cardiovascular Health. He is the Associate Dean for Global Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

In 1989, upon finishing his cardiology fellowship training and PhD (Cardiovascular Immunology) from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences - Delhi, Dr. Narula relocated to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School. At MGH, he completed cardiology, heart failure & transplantation, and nuclear cardiology fellowships and then joined the cardiology faculty. In 1997, he moved to Hahnemann University Schoolof Medicine, Philadelphia, where he was Thomas J. Vischer Professor of Medicine, Chief of the Division of Cardiology, Vice-Chairman of the department of Internal Medicine, and Director of Heart Failure & Transplantation Center. He subsequently joined University of California, Irvine School of Medicine (2003) as Chief of the Division of Cardiology, Associate Dean for Research, and Director of the Cardiovascular Center of the UC Irvine’s Douglas Hospital. He was also the Director of Memorial Heart & Vascular Institute, Long Beach Memorial Hospital, and Medical Director of the Edwards Lifesciences Center for Advanced Cardiovascular Technology in UC Irvine’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering.

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS: • Prevention of acute coronary events: From bench to bedside to population. Pathology, pathogenesis and molecular mechanisms of the plaque rupture and plaque erosion underlying acute coronary events, developing novel imaging techniques for identification of high-risk plaques by CT angiographic investigation, intracoronary imaging and molecular imaging, developing algorithms for risk stratification of asymptomatic subjects susceptible to coronary events, and initiation of numerous population-based prevention programs for acute coronary events including HAPPY [Heart Attack Prevention Program for You]. • Description of the phenomenon of heart muscle cell suicide (or apoptosis) in progression of heart failure, development of imaging techniques targeting myocardialapoptosis, autoschizis, necrosis and interstitial fibrosis during evolution of adverse cardiac remodeling. • Funded, in part, by the grants from National Institutes of Health, considered to be a true translationist and who has distinction of publishing in the best basic science and the best clinical journals including Science, • Nature (Medicine), PNAS, New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet. • Contributed more than 375 original research publications and 400 presentations, with editor of more than 25 books or journal supplements, and awarded as the best young investigator on several occasions for his research contributions. More than 20 of his fellows, working in his research laboratory, have also been awarded young investigator awards.

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES: • Editor-in-chief of the Journal of American College of Cardiology- Cardiovascular Imaging (official publication of the American College of Cardiology), 2007-2017. • Founder editor of the Heart Failure Clinics of North America, 2005-2007. • Designated as the editor-in-chief of one of the most famous textbooks of cardiology, Friedberg’s Diseases of the Heart going in its 4th edition. • Designated Editor-in-Chief of ‘Global Heart’ (official publication of World Heart Federation), 2011-2016.

Dr.Ragavendra R Baliga, MD, MBA, FACP, FACC, FRCP is Associate Director & Professor, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He is Deputy Editor of the Global Heart Journal. He is the CME Editor for J of Am College of Cardiology and JACC Imaging. He also serves on the Editorial Board of ACC Journal Scan and editorial advisor for Cardiology Review.

He completed his medical training from St. John's Medical College, Bangalore, Internal Medicine Training at Bangalore Medical College and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. He obtained his cardiovascular training from Imperial College Hospitals (Hammersmith Hospital & St. Mary's Medical School), London, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, Boston University and UT Southwestern Medical School, Dallas, Texas. He was a faculty cardiologist at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and has a MBA from Ross School of Business @ University of Michigan.

Dr. Umesh N. Khot, MD, is a Vice Chairman of the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine within the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic. His clinical specialties include coronary artery disease, heart attack care, heart valve disease and heart failure. He is board-certified in cardiovascular medicine, echocardiography and nuclear cardiology.

Dr. Khot is the author of a number of research articles in leading medical journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Journal of the American College of Cardiology and Circulation. He has contributed to novel understanding of the role of vasodilator therapy in severe aortic stenosis, the association between risk factors and heart disease, and insights into outcomes in patients with heart failure and heart surgery. His research has been cited within the practice guidelines of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and European Society of Cardiology.

Dr. Venu Menon, MD, is a staff cardiologist in the Section of Cardiovascular Imaging and Director of the Coronary Care Unit in the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is also a Director of the Cardiovascular Fellowship Program and Associate Director of C5 ( Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research). He is board-certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular diseases, nuclear cardiology and echocardiography. His specialty interests include critical care cardiology, cardiovascular imaging, echocardiography and valve disease and the conduct of clinical trials.

Dr. Menon received his medical degree from the J.I.P.M.E.R. Medical School, Madras University in Pondicherry, India. He took an internship in internal medicine at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, College of Physician and Surgeons, in New York, where he received the Chief Resident's Award as well as the Michael Rauchman award for best graduating resident. He went on to complete his fellowship training in cardiovascular disease, and continued his research training as a Clinical Research Fellow on the NIH-supported SHOCK Trial.

Dr. Menon has held several academic appointments. He was an Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Assistant Professor of Medicine and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award as Outstanding Teacher of the Year (2001-2002) while in New York. During his tenure at UNC School of Medicine, he was named Educator of the Year and was inducted into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society.

Prior to his 2005 appointment to Cleveland Clinic as Staff Cardiologist, Dr. Menon was a Director of the Coronary Care Unit and Director of the Chest Pain Unit at the University of North Carolina Hospitals. Prior to this appointment, he was an Assistant Director of Cardiac Research at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Dr. Menon is a reviewer for the American Heart Journal, the American Journal of Cardiology, the European Heart Journal, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Heart and the American Journal of Medicine.

His research interests have focused on early revascularization for cardiogenic shock as well as the late open artery hypothesis. He has published his research in leading peer-reviewed medical journals. He has edited, authored or co-authored textbooks and chapters in medical textbooks on chronic coronary artery disease, noninvasive cardiac testing and accute coronary syndromes. He has been invited to lecture on his specialty interests throughout the United States and internationally.

Dr. Menon is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association.

Dr. Zuzana Kaifoszova, M.D., MBA graduating from the Medical Faculty of the Charles University in Prague in 1982 began practicing medicine at the Faculty Hospital "Royal Vineyards" in Prague and is certified in internal diseases. In 1992 Zuzana decided to leave her medical practice and joined the pharmaceutical industry. Zuzana had then worked in different senior management positions for more than 17 years on national and regional levels including the US at major pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology companies.

Zuzana is a proud executive MBA graduate from Thunderbird School of Global Management. Her passion to pioneer new projects, work with different stakeholders and influence the healthcare environment thus bringing innovation to patients, led her to a decision to accept the invitation to design the Stent for Life Initiative (SFL) in Europe; one of the most exciting projects of her life. Currently 18 cardiac societies and affiliated organizations in Europe and Asia actively participate in SFL in order to shape healthcare environment and thus increase STEMI patients' access to a life saving indication of primary-PCI.

Motto: Gaining Access to Innovation. Building Coalitions. Saving Lives.