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Sarah Halawa, PhD student in applied sciences at AUC, with a specialization in biotechnology, received the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award for her PhD dissertation, which focuses on the genetics and epigenetics of cardiovascular diseases, helping to improve our understanding of valve biology, with potential implications on valve tissue engineering approaches. The research is a joint venture between AUC and the Magdi Yacoub Foundation.…

EMBO is pleased to announce that 64 life scientists have been elected to its membership. The new EMBO Members and Associate Members join the community of more than 1,800 leading life scientists.

“I am delighted to welcome the new members into our organization and look forward to working with them,” says EMBO Director Maria Leptin. “An election to the EMBO Membership recognizes outstanding achievements in the life sciences. The new members will provide expertise and guidance that will help EMBO to further strengthen its initiatives.”…

STS award recognizes outstanding scientific contributions to cardiothoracic surgery.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (January 28, 2020) — Legendary heart-lung transplant surgeon, researcher, and professor Sir Magdi Habib Yacoub, MD, today was honored with the 2020 Earl Bakken Scientific Achievement Award from The Society of Thoracic Surgeons during the organization’s 56th Annual Meeting.

“It is our pleasure to honor Dr. Yacoub as the Earl Bakken Scientific Achievement awardee,” said 2019-2020 STS President Robert S.D. Higgins, MD, MSHA. “His vision, passion, and innovations helped launch a new era of heart transplantation in the 1980s, and his pioneering surgical techniques have benefitted thousands of patients worldwide.”

Dr. Yacoub’s commitment to cardiothoracic surgery has been lifelong, with many significant contributions throughout his career. By some accounts, he has performed more heart and lung transplants than anyone else in the world–approximately 2,500. It also is estimated that he has completed more than 20,000 heart operations.

Dr. Yacoub was fascinated by science at a very young age, entering the Cairo University School of Medicine in 1950 on a full scholarship at just 15 years old. His career trajectory toward surgery was inspired by his father and uncles who were surgeons in Egypt. But even more significant was the experience of losing his 22-year-old aunt to a heart condition that could have been corrected had the latest surgical techniques been available in that country.

After graduating from medical school in 1957 and completing his surgical residencies, Dr. Yacoub trained in London under Russell Brock, MD, a leading British chest and heart surgeon and one of the pioneers of modern open heart surgery. He then moved to the United States and served as an assistant professor at The University of Chicago. Dr. Yacoub eventually returned to England, where one of his first assignments was at Harefield Hospital, a small, specialty-focused facility. Dr. Yacoub embraced the opportunity, and with what his colleagues have described as “massive intellect and brilliant technical surgical talents,” he transformed the modest hospital into the largest cardiothoracic surgical transplant program in Europe, performing more than 200 transplants each year.

Dr. Yacoub and his team introduced advanced innovations such as the heterotopic “piggyback” heart transplantation (the recipient’s heart is left in place with the donor heart connected to the right side of the chest) and the domino heart-lung/heart transplant procedure (one patient undergoes heart-lung transplantation and his/her heart is given, as part of a “domino” procedure, to …

Following a global search, King’s is delighted to announce Professor Ajay Shah has been appointed as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine (FoLSM) from 1 September 2021.

Professor Shah has been Interim Dean of the Faculty since January 2021, and having been at King’s for over 20 years, comes with a great breadth of knowledge of the Faculty, the university and Trust partners. He has held positions as the British Heart Foundation (BHF), Professor of Cardiology and Head of the School of Cardiovascular Medicine and Sciences, the James Black Professor of Medicine, Director of the King’s BHF Centre of Research Excellence, Director of King’s Health Partners Cardiovascular and is an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at King’s College Hospital.

Professor Shah has published approximately 400 peer-reviewed papers, with an h-index of 105, and is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, the International Society for Heart Research, the European Society of Cardiology, and the American Heart Association. He is Consulting Editor for Cardiovascular Research, and on the Editorial Boards of Circulation and the European Heart Journal.

I am pleased to congratulate Ajay on his appointment. As Executive Dean, Ajay will lead the Faculty in delivering an ambitious strategy that builds on its excellence in education, training and research and boost its local and global impact even further at this critical time as the world recovers from the COVID-19 pandemic.
– Professor Richard Trembath, Senior Vice President and Provost (Health)

Professor Shah’s main research interests are in the pathophysiology of heart failure and during the pandemic, he and his team have led crucial research on how a patient’s ethnic background affects their risk of severe disease and death. …