Paul Armstrong is a Distinguished University Professor with the Department of Medicine (Cardiology) at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and is the Director of the Canadian VIGOUR Centre (Virtual Coordinating Centre for Global Collaborative Cardiovascular Research). He serves in a broad range of consultative editorial and research review roles and has received numerous awards for scholarly contributions. He served formerly on the FDA Cardiovascular and Renal Drug Advisory Committee and on the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association’s ST Elevation Myocardial Infarction Guidelines Writing Committee. He has published extensively, frequently lectures in academic forums nationally and internationally, and plays a leadership role in a number of ongoing cardiovascular clinical trials. Dr. Armstrong has a lifelong commitment to the enhancement of health care and the education and training of cardiovascular research professionals. He is an attending Cardiologist at the University of Alberta Hospital, with particular interest and expertise in acute coronary care and heart failure.

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Dr. Christopher Buller is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario Faculty of Medicine, and trained in medicine and cardiology at the University of Toronto and University of British Columbia (UBC). In 1987, he was awarded Heart and Stroke Foundation and B.C. Health Research scholarships to train in interventional cardiology and research at Duke University. In 1991, he joined the faculty of UBC as a member of the Division of Cardiology at Vancouver General Hospital. In 2004, Dr. Buller accepted the Sauder Family Heart and Stroke Foundation Chair in Cardiology, and was appointed Head of the UBC Division of Cardiology. In 2009, he moved to McMaster University as Professor of Medicine. His research and clinical interests are closely aligned and include acute myocardial infarction, clinical and technical aspects of occlusive coronary disease, and complex coronary and renal revascularization. He is active in both contemporary clinical trials and in the development and analysis of population-based cardiovascular registries.

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Dr. Anand is a Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at McMaster University, the Director of McMaster Population Genomics Program and a vascular medicine specialist. She holds both the new Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario/Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Population Health Research, as well as the Eli Lily/May Cohen Chair in Women’s Health Research at McMaster. Her present research focuses upon the environmental and genetic determinants of vascular disease in populations of varying ancestral origin, women and cardiovascular disease, and peripheral vascular disease.

Past education includes an undergraduate degree in Life Sciences from Queen’s University in 1989, a Doctor of Medicine from McMaster in 1992, Internal Medicine Training at McMaster and a Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in 1996. She further received her Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at McMaster in 1996 and Ph.D. in Health Research Methodology at McMaster in 2002. She completed a Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada Research Fellowship in 1998, and in 2001 completed a Vascular Medicine Fellowship at Harvard University’s Brigham and Women's Hospital. In 1996, Dr. Anand received a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Clinician Scientist Award Phase 1 followed by the Phase 2 Award which she held from 2003 to 2008. In 2004 Dr. Anand received a CIHR and HSFO ICE grant devoted to the study of sex/gender determinants of cardiovascular disease, called the CARdiovascular INvestigations in Gender (CARING Network). Dr. Anand is also the Principal Investigator of two large genetic association studies including the CIHR/HSFO funded EPiDREAM study of 22,000 people from 21 countries. Her work is widely published amongst academic and peer-evaluated journals and she teaches clinical epidemiology courses in methodology and cardiovascular disease at McMaster University.

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Dr. Baillie trained in Glasgow, Scotland andWinnipeg,Manitoba before embarking on a career as a community internist inMission,B.C. (population 30,000) andNanaimo,B.C. (population of about 100,000). Like many internists, he has developed an interest in Cardiovascular Medicine, both in prevention (e.g. hypertension, angina, PAD) and treatment (e.g. cardioversion, thrombolysis, ACS). He is director of the Heart Function Clinic in Nanaimo, and Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Journal of General Internal Medicine. He enjoys teaching, travel, and painting—and values the support of his understanding wife, his three adult dependents, and his financial consultant.

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Dr. Paul Dorian is the Department Director, Division of Cardiology, University of Toronto and Staff Cardiac Electrophysiologist at St. Michael's Hospital. He is Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology and in the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto, and a Staff Scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute.

Dr. Dorian received his medical degree from McGill University in Montreal in 1976. He continued training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the University of Toronto, and received certification by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Internal Medicine in 1983 and certification in Cardiology in 1984. He completed training in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of Toronto in 1982, and received an MSc in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto in 1982. From 1983 to 1985, he completed a Fellowship in Cardiac Electrophysiology at Stanford University Medical Centre in California.

His research interests include basic science research in advanced cardiac life support, ventricular fibrillation, defibrillation, the clinical pharmacology of antiarrhythmic drugs, and clinical research on implanted devices, antiarrhythmic drugs, and quality of life in patients with arrhythmias.

He is a Co-PI on the NIH funded Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium, and Chair of the arrhythmia section of the CaNNECTIN Canadian cardiovascular clinical trials collaborative, and serves on the steering committee of several multicenter clinical trials in arrhythmia care.

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Dr. Christopher Granger is a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at Duke University and Director of the Cardiac Care Unit for the Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Granger is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, the American Heart Association, and of the European Society of Cardiology. He is Associate Editor of the American Heart Journal and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He is a cardiology section author for Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment. He serves on the publication oversight committee of the American Heart Association and he is chairman of the Advisory Working Group of the American Heart Association Mission: Lifeline program. He is a member of the 2011 ACC/AHA STEMI Guidelines Committee. He has served on FDA advisory committees on an ad hoc basis. He is on the Board of External Experts of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI).

Dr. Granger’s primary research interest is in the conduct and methodology of large randomized clinical trials in heart disease; he has co-authored more than 400 peerreviewed manuscripts. He currently serves on a number of clinical trial steering committees and data safety monitoring committees. He has coordinated the Duke Clinical Research Institutes' activities in many clinical trials evaluating acute MI reperfusion and antithrombotic strategies in acute coronary syndromes and in atrial fibrillation.

Dr. Granger is co-chairman of the Steering Committee of the ARISTOTLE trial assessing an oral factor Xa inhibitor for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation. In addition, he is co-director of the Reperfusion of Acute MI in Carolina Emergency Departments (RACE) projects, North Carolina state-wide programs to improve reperfusion care for acute myocardial infarction and care for cardiac arrest.

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Dr. Hochman holds a Masters Degree in Cellular and Developmental Biology from Harvard University and an MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed residency in Internal Medicine at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and Fellowship in Cardiovascular Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Medical Center. She currently serves on the NHLBI Board of External Experts and the NHLBI Protocol Review Committee, Cardiovascular Cell Therapy, Research Network, FDA/CDER Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee, and the AHA National Research Committee. She is a member of the American College of Cardiology/ American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) Task Force on Practice Guidelines, is a Senior Guest Editor for Circulation and serves on editorial boards of European Heart Journal and American Heart Journal. She has authored over 200 publications.

Dr. Hochman is an experienced clinical trialist and has a particular interest in ischemic heart disease, including the study of optimal management strategies, sex differences in pathophysiology and response to treatment, and cardiogenic shock. She has led as Study Chair and Director of the Clinical Coordinating Center NHLBI funded international comparative effectiveness trials that tested the role of revascularization for subsets of patients with coronary artery disease. One such trial, SHOCK, demonstrated the survival benefit of early revascularization for cardiogenic shock complicating MI. The other trial, OAT, demonstrated no benefit for late angioplasty for persistently blocked arteries in the subacute phase post MI. Both trial results led to new recommendations in the ACC/AHA Guidelines. She was Study Chair for the first phase 2 and phase 3 multicenter randomized trials conducted to test a pharmacologic agent, a nitric oxide synthase inhibitor, for cardiogenic shock complicating acute MI (SHOCK 2 and TRIUMPH). She has expertise in the investigation of novel anti-platelet and anticoagulant agent use in ACS and has served on the steering committee and Data Safety Monitoring Board for numerous international clinical trials testing these agents. Dr. Hochman is also the Study Chair of ISCHEMIA, a new comparative effectiveness trial of 8000 patients testing a routine invasive strategy vs. a conservative strategy for the management of patients with stable ischemic heart disease and at least moderate inducible ischemia (NHLBI funding pending).

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Dr. Liu graduated from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. During his cardiology training, he also pursued a post-doctoral fellowship in cardiovascular imaging and immunology at the Massachusetts General Hospital of Harvard Medical School, and clinical epidemiology at McMaster University. In 1985 he joined the Division of Cardiology at the Toronto General Hospital, University of Toronto. Since 1999, he has been the Heart and Stroke/Polo Chair Professor at the University Health Network and serves as Director of the Heart and Stroke/Richard Lewar Centre of Excellence in Cardiovascular Research at the University of Toronto. Since 2006, he was the Scientific Director at CIHR’s Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, where he coordinated strategic research in heart and lung diseases across Canada.

Dr. Liu focuses his own research on the pathophysiology and clinical outcomes of heart failure from bench to bedside. His team has elucidated the role of inflammation in changing heart structure and function, and potential novel treatment targets in heart failure. His laboratory has also identified how viruses and bacteria can accelerate heart failure and coronary artery disease, and is developing novel vaccines to prevent these complications. With support from Genome Canada, CIHR group and team programs, and the Heart and Stroke Foundation, he is also pursuing novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets for early cardiovascular disease identification. He has published over 310 peer-reviewed articles in high impact journals, and his work has been cited over 20,000 times in the literature. In addition, he co-chaired a series of Canadian Cardiovascular Society Consensus Guideline Recommendations for heart failure care.

He is the recipient of numerous awards in recognition of his scientific contributions and accomplishments including the Rick Gallop Research Award Recognizing Research Excellence from the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario (2003), the Research Achievement Award from the Canadian Cardiovascular Society (2003), Visiting Research Professor Award from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons (2005), and the Extramural Award of Merit from the American College of Cardiology (2005), amongst others. He has served as the scientific program chair for the Canadian Cardiovascular Society, Heart Failure Society of America and International Meeting of the Human Proteomic Organization. He was chair for several CIHR and NIH scientific review panels.

Currently he is the Director of the National C-CHANGE Initiative, harmonizing and integrating cardiovascular preventive guidelines for both the professional and patients, and developing strategies for implementation. He is also member of the World Heart Federation, coordinating global heart failure programs.

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Dr. Teddi Orenstein Lyall graduated medicine in 1986 and Cardiology in 1993 from the University of Toronto. She has worked as a community cardiologist at Richmond Hospital in British Columbia since 1994. Her involvement in ACS includes primary investigator for the “In Time 2” trial, West trial and the Grace trials. In addition she participates in the STEMI committee, whose commitment it is to provide emergency room protocols, streamline treatment and now to provide timely primary angioplasty to all patients in the Vancouver region.

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Dr. Jean-François Tanguay received his MD degree from the Université de Montréal School of Medicine, where he completed his internship, internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship. After an interventional fellowship at the Montreal Heart Institute, he trained at Duke University Medical Center in the Interventional Cardiology Program. He is an internationally recognized expert in the field of interventional cardiology and is very interested in translational research. He is Director of the Experimental Interventional Cardiology Laboratory at the Montreal Heart Institute. His current research interests focus on improving vascular healing, stabilizing vulnerable plaque and reducing restenosis.

This renowned investigator contributed to the discovery of a P-Selectin inhibitor to reduce restenosis and prevent intra-stent stenosis. This could lead to a new class of medication inhibiting pathologic interactions between platelets, leucocytes and endothelial cells. Dr. Tanguay’s most recent investigations brought promising discoveries related to 17 beta-estradiol and the specific contribution of estrogen receptors in vascular healing have led to better knowledge in this cutting-edge research topic.

Dr. Tanguay is Director of the Coronary Unit, Cardiologist and Research Scientist at the Montreal Heart Institute. He is currently Associate Professor of Medicine and also Director of the MD/PhD program at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA), the American College of Cardiology (FACC), the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (FRCPC) and the European Society of Cardiology (FESC). He acted as President of the Canadian Association of Interventional Cardiology (CAIC) from 2002 to 2005 and is co-director of the Interventional Cardiology Montreal Symposium. Dr. Tanguay has also been elected Governor in Quebec for the American College of Cardiology.

Author or co-author of more than 300 scientific publications, abstracts and book chapters, Dr. Tanguay also acts as grant reviewer for the Fonds de Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ), the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (HSFC) and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Dr. Tanguay is a member of the Scientific Committee for Clinical Studies funded by CIHR and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Ex. TIMACS, FREEDOM and NHLBI Dynamic Registry) and the Principal investigator of many clinical trials at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI). He is a reviewer for many scientific Journals including Circulation, The Canadian Journal of Cardiology, The American Journal of Cardiology, Catheterization and Cardiovascular Intervention and The European Heart Journal.

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Lars Wallentin became the first Professor of Cardiology at Uppsala University Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden in 1991 and was Head of the Department of Cardiology from 1991 to 1999. He founded the Cardiothoracic Center at Uppsala, becoming its first Chairman in 1994 to 1995, and going on to serve as Vice Chairman from 1995 to 1999. In 1992 he started and became the first chairman of the Swedish Registry of Acute Cardiac Care (RIK-HIA). In 2001, Professor Wallentin founded the Uppsala Clinical Research Center, where he was the first Director until 2008. In 2002, he founded and became the first Director of the First Swedish Competence Center for national Quality Registers in Health Care until 2008, which now is responsible for more than 20 registries in different areas of health care in Sweden and internationally. Over the last 20 years Professor Wallentin has been the chairman and principal investigator of many national and international clinical trials of new treatment concepts in cardiac diseases. Currently he is the chief researcher of cardiovascular disease at UCR and the leader of several global clinical trials including more than 60,000 patients investigating not only concerning the effects of new pharmaceutical agents but also the genetic and biochemical basis for cardiovascular diseases.

The group of Lars Wallentin has developed many new concepts concerning pathogenesis, diagnosis, risk stratification, and antithrombotic and interventional treatments in acute coronary artery diseases. Over the last 20 years, they have pioneered the use of molecular biomarkers and new treatment concepts in acute coronary artery diseases.

Prof Wallentin has published more than 350 papers in peer-reviewed international journals, in addition to a large number of other publications and book chapters and has received several prestigious research awards. He is a member of numerous research councils, medical societies, task forces, working groups and editorial boards, and is an expert for the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare. From 1998 to 1999, Professor Wallentin was President of the Swedish Cardiac Society, and from 2000 to 2002, he founded and served as President of the Swedish Heart Association. He has also got several prestigious research awards and was in 2010 honored with the European Society of Cardiology Gold Medal for his outstanding contributions to the science and practice of cardiology.

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Robert Welsh is an associate professor and academic interventional cardiologist at the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute in Edmonton. He is the director of Adult Cardiac Catheterization and Interventional Cardiology. He is also the co-director of the University of Alberta Chest Pain Program, which he initiated and designed in collaboration with Dr. Brian Holroyd (Chief, Emergency Medicine). He is co-chair of Vital Heart Response, a regional reperfusion program for early treatment of STEMI patients. He is co-chair of the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute Transcatheter Aortic Valve Intervention program.

Dr. Welsh received his Medical Doctorate from the University of Saskatchewan in 1993, where he subsequently trained in Internal Medicine (1993-1996). He undertook Cardiology training and an Interventional Cardiology fellowship at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (1996-2000).

Pre-hospital management of STEMI and the interaction of pharmacological (antithrombotic and fibrinolytic) and mechanical interventions (primary and rescue angioplasty) are the focus of his clinical research. Further research interests include: 1) investigation, assessment and management of “chest pain” patients in the Emergency Department; 2) cardiac risk stratification of diabetic patients prior to renal and islet transplantation; and 3) the impact of prolonged strenuous exercise on myocardial function. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed papers, journal reviews, book chapters and abstracts.

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