The award recognizes an established investigator in the prime of his or her career who has made an outstanding contribution to furthering understanding of the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis and/or the development of treatment strategies for its prevention through basic science and clinical research efforts. The award honors the memory of Jeffrey M. Hoeg, MD, an extraordinary research scientist and physician who, in the prime of his career, was working in the field of lipoprotein metabolism and atherosclerosis.
2023
MASANORI AIKAWA, MD, PhD
2020
ELENA AIKAWA, MD, PhD, FAHA
The award was established in honor of Dr. Werner Risau, an investigator who formulated key concepts for the regulation of angiogenesis, challenged the prevailing dogmas about angiogenic factors, and proposed the now accepted hypothesis that several growth factors act sequentially to mediate vasculogenesis, angiogenesis, and vascular remodeling.
The 2023 ATVB Journal Early Career Investigator Award
Arvind Pandey, MD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Expression of CD70 Modulates Nitric Oxide and Redox Status in Endothelial Cells
Each year the BWH Cardiovascular Division honors three outstanding fellowship trainees for their contributions to Cardiovascular Basic Science – Thomas Smith Award, Clinical Science – Eugene Braunwald Award, and Physiology – Richard Gorlin Award.
The 2023 Honorees for the BWH Cardiovascular Named Fellowships
Award
Intended to promote the investigative career of an individual at the fellow level working in physiology, hemodynamics, or catheterization based research.
Cassandra L. Clift, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Title: Defining the Histone Code of Epigenetic Regulation in Calcific Aortic Valve Stenosis via Multi-Omics Approaches.
Mentor: Elena Aikawa, MD, PhD
1998 William Maisel, MD
1999 Frederic Resnic, MD
2001 Douglas Drachman, MD
2002 Marc Sabatine, MD
2003 Yerem Yeghiazarians, MD
2004 Akshay Desai, MD
2005 Kent Stephenson, MD
2006 Kevin Croce, MD
2008 Sahil A. Parikh, MD
2009 Reena L. Pande, MD
2010 Matthew Steinhauser, MD
2011 Kumaran Kolandaivelu, MD, PhD
2012 Neil Wimmer, MD
2013 Viviany Taqueti, MD, MPH
2014 Benjamin Galper, MD
2015 Ivana Nikolic, MD
2016 Matthew Nayor, MD
2017 Aaron Kithcart, MD, PhD
2018 Aaron Aday, MD
2019 Sanjay Divakaran, MD
2020 Nicholas Marston, MD
2021 Jenifer M. Brown, MD
2022 Zaid Almarzooq, MB
Award
Intended to promote the investigative career of an individual at the fellow level working in clinical investigation in the broadest sense.
Aeron Small, MD
Clinical Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Title: Genetic and Clinical Determinants of Disease Progression in Calcific Aortic Stenosis.
Mentor: Pradeep Natarajan, MD, MMSc
1998 James Delemos, MD
1999 David Morrow, MD
2001 Koichiro Harada, MD
2002 Thomas Gaziano, MD
2003 Bruce Koplan, MD
2004 Usha Tedrow, MD
2005 Anne Hamik, MD
2006 Benjamin Scirica, MD
2008 Todd S. Perlstein, MD
2009 Jeffrey Winterfield, MD
2010 Paul Cohen, MD
2011 Nathan Stitziel, MD, PhD
2012 Jacob Udell, MD, PhD
2013 Benjamin Olenchock, MD, PhD
2014 Aaron Aguirre, MD, PhD
2015 Kevin King, MD, PhD
2016 Patrick Lawler, MD
2017 Mark Benson, MD, PhD
2018 Arman Qamar, MD
2019 Christopher N. Toepfer, PhD
2020 David D. Berg, MD
2021 Jonathan W. Cunningham, MD
2022 Victor Nauffal, MD
Award
Intended to promote the investigative career of a physician at either the fellow or junior faculty level who desires to pursue basic or clinical investigation as it pertains to heart failure.
Eric Wei, MD, PhD
Clinical Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Title: In vivo assessment of cardiomyocyte microarchitecture and morphology in genetic heart diseases.
Mentor: Christine Seidman, MD
Previous Award Recipients
1997 Margaret Arstall,MD
1998 Ulrike Mende, MD
1999 Junsuke Igarashi, MD, PhD
2001 Carolyn Ho, MD
2002 Mark W. Feinberg, MD
2003 Marco Lopez-Ilasaca, MD
2004 Paul Christian Schulze, MD
2005 LibinWang, MD, PhD
2006 Jae Kim, MD
2007 Sanjeev A. Francis, MD
2009 Javid Moslehi, MD
2010 Karen Joynt, MD
2011 Bradley A. Maron, MD
2012 Francis Alenghat, MD, PhD
2013 Travis Hinson, MD, PhD
2014 Rajat Gupta, MD
2015 Sunil Kapur, MD
2016 Michael G. Silverman, MD
2017 Kevin Alexander,MD
2018 Andrea Sorrentino, PhD
2019 Rishi K. Wadhera, MD, MPP, MPhil
2020 Daniel Reichart, MD
2021 Brittany Weber, MD, PhD
2022 Deepak Atri, PhD
Supports highly promising healthcare and academic professionals, in the early years of one’s first professional appointment, to explore innovative questions or pilot studies that will provide preliminary data and training necessary to assure the applicant’s future success as a research scientist.
The American Heart Association recognizes outstanding early career faculty with generous Career Development Awards designed to help launch their careers as they begin their faculty appointment. The Cardiovascular Division is proud to announce the recipients of the AHA Career Development Award.
2023
Abhijeet Sonawane, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Unraveling Macrophage Heterogeneity using Single-cell Gene Regulatory Networks Approach
Mentors: Elena Aikawa, MD, PhD and Masanori Aikawa, MD, PhD
2021
Brittany Weber, MD, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Advanced CV Imaging and Immunophenotyping to Study Coronary Vascular Health in Psoriasis
Mentor: Marcelo Di Carli, MD
2019
Lai Ming Yung, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Biased Agonism of RXFP1 for the Treatment of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension.
Mentor: Paul B. Yu, MD, PhD
The Alan Lerner Symposium showcases the breadth and depth of our research enterprise and facilitates our gathering new ideas to pursue for both bench and bedside research. Thank you again for your unwavering support of our young investigators.
David Berg, MD, MPH
Assistant Professor of
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assessment of Atherothrombotic Risk in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus
Alexander J. Blood, MD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Diabetes Remote Intervention to improVe Use of Evidence-Based Medications Study: A Randomized Evaluation of a Team-Based Remote Education and Medication Management Program to Reduce CV and Kidney Risk.
Vivian Lee, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Variant-to-Function of Coronary Artery Disease: Identifying Novel Regulation of the Notch Pathway in Endothelial Cells
FIRST PLACE
Shruti Rawal, PhD
Research Associate in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Regulation of Succinate Signaling and Immunometabolism in Diabetes-associated Atherosclerosis by miR-369-3p
Mentor: Mark W. Feinberg, MD
SECOND PLACE
Three way tie!
Rachel Cahalane, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Searching for the Mechanisms of Accelerated Calcification in Bioprosthetic Heart Valves
Mentor: Elena Aikawa, MD, PhD
Sarvesh Chelvanambi, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
HIV-Nef Extracellular Vesicles Modulate Macrophage Heterogeneity to Promote Atherosclerosis
Mentor: Masanori Aikawa, MD
Shi Fang, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Functional Characterization of a CCM2 Mutation Associated with Coronary Artery Disease
Mentor: Rajat Gupta, MD
THIRD PLACE
Maria A. Pabon MD
Clinical Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Influence of Background Medical Therapy on Efficacy and Safety of Dapagliflozin in Patients With Heart Failure With Improved Ejection Fraction in the DELIVER Trial
Mentor: Scott D. Solomon, MD
Jonathan W. Cunningham, MD, MPH
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Aptamer Proteomics for Biomarker Discovery in Heart Failure with Reduced Ejection Fraction
Laurel Y. Lee, MD, DPHIL
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
T-cell-mediated Endothelial Metabolic Reprogramming in Coronary Artery Disease
Brittany Weber, MD, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Association Between Reduction in Inflammation and Change in Cardiovascular Risk: Results From the LiiRA Study.
Yuri Kim, MD, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Intron-Mediated Enhancer of TTN, Encoding Titin, Regulates Sarcomere Formation and Function
Nicholas Marston, MD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Predictive Power and Value of a CAD Polygenic Risk Score in Primary Prevention Based on Age and Clinical Risk
Andriy Samokhin, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
NEDD9 Is a Novel Anti-Fibrotic Therapeutic Target and Biomarker in Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension
FIRST PLACE
Jingshu Chen, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Isolation and Primary Culture of Murine Aortic Cells for Atherosclerosis Research
Mentor: Mark W. Feinberg, MD
SECOND PLACE
Rulin Zhuang, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
KLF10 Deficiency in CD4+ T Cells Exacerbate Angiotensin II-Induced Perivascular Fibrosis
Mentor: Mark W. Feinberg, MD
THIRD PLACE
Wandi Zhu, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Piezo1 Mediates a Novel Mechano-Thrombotic Pathway in Cardiometabolic Disease
Mentor: Calum A. MacRae, MD, PhD
Olga Demler, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Heterogeneous Effects of Omega-3 (n-3) Downstream Fatty Acids (FAs) and Oxylipins on Risk of Cardiovascular Disease: Results of Two Metabolomics Substudies of the Randomized Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (VITAL)
Shashi Kant, PhD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Neural JNK3 Regulates Blood Flow Recovery After Hindlimb Ischemia in Mice via an Egr1/Creb1 Axis
Muthiah Vaduganathan, MD, MPH
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Empagliflozin Delays Progression to Insulin Initiation or Intensification in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease: Findings from the EMPA-REG OUTCOME Trial
FIRST PLACE
Tianxiao Liu,PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Eosinophils Improve Cardiac Functions After Myocardial Infarction
SECOND PLACE
Xin Liu,PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Eosinophils Protect Mice From Angiotensin-II Perfusion-Induced Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm
THIRD PLACE
Xian Zhang, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Divergent Roles of Two IL18 Receptors in Brown Adipose Tissue Thermogenesis and White Adipose Tissue Glucose Metabolism and Insulin Sensitivity
Rajat Gupta, MD
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Single Cell Analysis of the Normal Mouse Aorta Reveals Functionally Distinct Endothelial Cell Populations.
Arvind Pandey, MD
Instructor in Medicine
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
CD70 is Essential for Protein Expression in Endothelial Nitric Oxide Synthase.
Sasha Singh, PhD
Instructor in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Insights into Protein Metabolism Heterogeneity Challenge the Reverse Cholesterol Transport Theory: A Novel Mass Spectrometry Platform for Metabolic Tracer Studies in the Clinic
FIRST PLACE
Sio (Henry) Cheng, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Identification of MicroRNAs in Human and Mouse Diabetic Critical Limb Ischemia.
SECOND PLACE
Patricia Borck, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Inhibition of BRD4 Prevents the Misexpression of Mesenchymal and Fibrotic Markers during Endothelial to Mesenchymal Transition.
THIRD PLACE
Livia Passos, PhD
Research Fellow in Medicine
Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Proteins Associated With Sex Hormone Receptor Activity Contribute to Heart Valve Disease.