James Spudich, PhD, Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Disease, is in the Department of Biochemistry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1963 and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Stanford in 1968. He did postdoctoral work in genetics at Stanford and in structural biology at the MRC Laboratory in Cambridge, England. From 1971 to 1977 he was Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco. In 1977 he was appointed Professor in the Department of Structural Biology at Stanford University. Spudich served as Chairman of the Department of Structural Biology from 1979-1984. Since 1992 he has been Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, and served as Chairman from 1994-1998. He has held a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology since 1989. From 1998 to 2002, he was Co-Founder and first Director of the Stanford Interdisciplinary Program in Bioengineering, Biomedicine and Biosciences called Bio-X. At present he is also an Adjunct Professor at the National Center for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and InStem in Bangalore, India.

Dr Spudich is known for his contributions to the molecular basis of biological movement ranging from intracellular transport to cardiac muscle contraction in health and disease. His scientific findings are the foundation for a biotech company and its development of an FDA approved, first in class therapeutic for genetic heart failure. His scientific impact has been recognized by membership in the National Academy of Sciences and the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, considered to be a stepping stone to the Nobel Prize.

Dr. Spudich's events included a Scholar's Tea and Career Development seminar "Integrating Academic Scholarship, Biotech Entrepreneurship and Personal Life in One Lifetime" for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees, and a Medicine Grand Rounds program titled "Myosin, The Exquisite Nanomachine: Basic Mechanisms to Therapies".  *These events are made possible by a generous gift from Martin Bloomfield, MD, '60 to the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont.

Kellie Machlus, PhD received her B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Delaware. She then obtained her Ph.D. in Pathology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill under the mentorship of Alisa Wolberg, studying the association between hypercoagulability and thrombosis. Dr. Machlus then completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School with Joseph Italiano, where she examined mechanisms that modulate and trigger proplatelet formation from megakaryocytes. She now runs an independent lab at Harvard Medical School where she focuses on mediators of megakaryocyte differentiation, maturation, and platelet production, with a strong focus on how these things are modulated during inflammation.

Kellie Machlus, PhD is an early career scientist at the Boston Children’s Hospital who is interested in studying megakaryocyte differentiation and maturation with a focus on how they are mediated by inflammation. Other and newer avenues of research she is looking at include: extracellular vesicles, how lipids affect megakaryocyte production, hematopoiesis and obesity.

Her events included a Scholar's Tea for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees, an interactive Career Development seminar titled "Cultivating Leadership in  Yourself and Others Through Trust and Kindness" and a Medicine Grand Rounds program titled "Novel Mechanisms Regulating Megakaryocyte Differentiation and Platelet Production".  *These events were made possible by a generous gift from many donors to the Jim Ray Memorial Heart Ride.

Judith Hochman, M.D., is Senior Associate Dean for Clinical Sciences, Co-Director of the NYU-HHC Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Harold Snyder Family Professor and Associate Director of the Leon Charney Division of Cardiology, and Director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center at NYU Langone Health.

She is an internationally recognized clinical trialist and expert in ischemic heart disease, having served as Study Chair for NHLBI-funded international clinical trials testing the role of revascularization for patients with ischemic heart disease, which led to two new recommendations regarding the role of revascularization (stents and coronary bypass surgery) in the US and International Practice Guidelines. She has served for over a decade on the NHLBI Board of External Experts, and on the American College of Cardiology (ACC)/ American Heart Association (AHA) Task Force on Practice Guidelines as well as guideline writing committees, the AHA Strategic Advisory Coordinating Committee and the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee. She is Study Chair of the NHLBI-funded international ISCHEMIA comparative effectiveness trial testing two initial management strategies for patients with ischemia. The trial demonstrated no net difference in the primary outcome or all-cause mortality, but improved quality of life in those with baseline angina. The primary results of the trial have been presented at the AHA 2019 Scientific Sessions, published in the NEJM and widely covered with a billion media impressions. She was the inaugural director of the AHA-funded Sarah Ross Soter Center for Women’s Cardiovascular Research at NYU School of Medicine, where she and colleagues study myocardial infarction in women, with a focus on understanding why women more often than men have MI without typical blockages in their coronary arteries.

She has authored ~400 publications, reviews and chapters in major internal medicine and cardiovascular journals and textbooks. In addition, she was senior guest editor for Circulation and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology, the European Heart Journal and the American Heart Journal. Dr. Hochman has served as a mentor for numerous trainees who have gone on to have successful independent careers. She is the recipient of the 2008 AHA Women in Cardiology Mentoring Award, the 2014 Clinical Research Prize of the AHA, the 2016 Distinguished Scientist Award (Clinical Domain) of the ACC, the AHA 2018 James B. Herrick Award for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Cardiology, and the invited presenter of the European Society of Cardiology 2020 Rene Laennec Lecture. 

Dr. Hochman's events included a Scholar's Tea and Career Development seminar "A Career in Clinical Investigation" (Passcode: M*87&@wP) for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees, and a Medicine Grand Rounds program "The Role of Revascularization in SIHD: A Deep Dive into ISCHEMIA".  *These events are made possible by a generous gift from Martin Bloomfield, MD, '60 to the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont.

Stephen Juraschek, MD, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.  Dr. Juraschek is a clinician investigator with expertise in epidemiology and clinical trials. His primary area of interest is blood pressure regulation with standing and its relationship with adverse events such as falls and syncope. He is currently involved in several clinical trials examining a healthy eating pattern, the DASH diet, as well as sodium reduction in relation to cardiovascular risk factors, physical function, and blood pressure. He is also the principal investigator on a study that examines the effects of healthy diet on subclinical cardiovascular disease, in particular, high sensitivity troponin and NT-proB-type natriuretic peptide.

Dr. Juraschek has also published over 10 studies on uric acid and gout and is currently leading a clinical trial on diet for uric acid reduction. He is also interested in health disparities with regards to food access as well as participation in clinical trials. This interest has led to several recent studies on trial recruitment of under-represented groups.

He has authored more than 70 publications, achieving an H-index of 29. His work has extensively used observational and cross-sectional studies, including ARIC and NHANES, as well as secondary analyses of trials like DASH, DASH-Sodium, OmniHeart, POWER, AASK, and SPRINT. He is a true physician scientist who takes research inspiration from patient care.

Dr. Juraschek's events included a Medicine Grand Rounds seminar and Career Development talk for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees.  *These events are made possible by a generous gift from the many donors of the Jim Ray Memorial Heart Ride to the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont.

Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, serves as The Mount Sinai Medical Hospital as Physician-in-Chief, as well as, Director of Mount Sinai Heart Center.  Dr. Fuster is the General Director of the National Center for Cardiovascular Investigation or CNIC (equivalent to NHLBI) in Madrid, Spain.  Dr. Fuster has held innumerable positions including those of President of the American Heart Association, President of the World Heart Federation, member of the US National Academy of Medicine, member of the European Horizon 2020 Scientific Panel of Health, Council member of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and President of the Training Program of the American College of Cardiology.

Dr. Fuster is an author on more than 1,000 scientific articles.  He was named Editor-in-Chief of the journal Nature Reviews in Cardiology and recently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.  His research into the origin of cardiovascular events has contributed to improved treatment of heart attack patients.

His events include a Career Development in Academic Medicine Q&A, Case Presentations by Cardiology Fellows on Acute Coronary Syndromes, and a Medicine Grand Rounds program titled "The Evolving Science of Health: Imaging, Genetics and Behavior".  *These events are made possible by a generous gift from Martin Bloomfield, MD '60 to the CVRI.

Viviany Taqueti, MD, MPH, serves as a cardiologist, cardiovascular imager and Director of the Cardiac Stress Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. She is a physician-scientist with a translational focus on applying functional imaging tools to phenotype cardiovascular outcomes in ischemic and inflammatory heart disease.

She is board certified in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Disease, Echocardiography and Nuclear Cardiology. She is an associate member at the Broad Institute and an elected member of the Faculty Council at Harvard Medical School. She is a former Section Editor for the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, incoming Chair of the Publications Committee of the American College of Cardiology, and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology.  Her clinical and research interests include ischemic heart disease in women and men, imaging and quantification of coronary blood flow and coronary microvascular dysfunction, inflammation, obesity, and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. 

Her events included a Scholar's Tea for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees, Case Studies Conference discussing the Value of Cardiovascular Imaging, and a Medicine Grand Rounds program titled "Quantitative PET/CT Imaging for Diagnosis and Management of Stable Ischemic Heart Disease and Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction".  *These events were made possible by a generous gift from many donors to the Jim Ray Memorial Heart Ride.

Elizabeth McNally, M.D., Ph.D. serves as the Elizabeth J. Ward Professor of Genetic Medicine at Northwestern University. Dr. McNally is an expert in the genetics of myopathic processes that result in both muscle and heart degeneration. Her work focuses on defining and understanding genetic mechanisms of myopathies and specifically using quantitative trait locus mapping to identify genetic modifiers of these degenerative processes. These genetic signals are being used to develop novel therapies to treat these disorders. She has a special interest in neuromuscular genetic diseases like muscular dystrophy and inherited cardiomyopathies.

Her translational work was recognized by an award from the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation and as a recipient a Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. She serves on the Advisory Boards for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, and is the Vice Chair for the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the American Heart Association. She is a past president of American Society for Clinical Investigation and a member of the Association of American Physicians. She is the founder of Ikaika Therapeutics.

Her events included a Career Development Q&A "From Bench to Bedside and Beyond" for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees and a Seminar titled "Modifiers of Myopathy".  *These events were made possible by a generous gift from Martin Bloomfield, M.D. '60 to the CVRI.

Formally trained in cardiovascular medicine and epidemiology, Dr. Paul M Ridker is the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, a translational research unit at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.  Dr. Ridker’s research focuses on the design and conduct of multi-national randomized trials, the development of inflammatory biomarkers for clinical and research use, the molecular and genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases, and on novel strategies for cardiovascular disease detection and prevention. As a preventive cardiologist, Dr. Ridker is best known for his work developing the inflammatory hypothesis of heart disease, the clinical application of high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) testing as a method to better evaluate cardiovascular risk, and the demonstration in 2008 in the large-scale JUPITER trial that statin therapy is highly effective at reducing heart attack and stroke when given to men and women with elevated hsCRP levels.

Dr. Ridker is a graduate of Brown University, the Harvard Medical School, the Harvard School of Public Health, and has received honorary medical degrees from several international institutions.  Dr. Ridker’s primary research brings together classical tools of large-scale, population based epidemiology with emerging genetic and molecular techniques designed to improve our ability to predict and prevent vascular disease. Particular areas of interest involve inflammatory mechanisms of heart disease and molecular and genetic determinants of hemostasis, thrombosis, and inflammation with a focus on “predictive medicine”, early disease diagnosis, and the underlying causes and prevention of acute coronary syndromes. Dr. Ridker’s research efforts have been supported by multiple RO1 research grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (New York), and through philanthropic research grants from the Leducq Foundation (Paris FR), and the Donald W Reynolds Foundation (Las Vegas, NV).  Dr. Ridker currently serves on the Board of External Experts for the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute.

Dr. Ridker's events included a Scholar's Tea and Career Development talk "Conducting Clinical Trials" for early career junior investigators, fellows and trainees, a Cardiology Case Studies Conference, and a Medicine Grand Rounds program.  *These events are made possible by a generous gift from Martin Bloomfield, MD, '60 to the Cardiovascular Research Institute of Vermont.