About Us

Dr. Pokorney is an electrophysiologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Duke University. His areas of expertise include treatment options related to stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation, bleeding management in atrial fibrillation, atrial fibrillation prevention and rhythm management, contact force-sensing catheters, the use of antiarrhythmic medications, risk of sudden death and use of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators after acute cardiovascular events, and lead management for patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices. He received his MD and his MBA in Health Industry Management from Northwestern University. His post-graduate training included a Clinical Research Fellowship at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, as well as a Cardiovascular Disease Fellowship and an Electrophysiology Fellowship at the Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Pokorney has contributed book chapters on pharmacological management of atrial fibrillation in the outpatient setting and on managing recurrent implanted cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) therapies. He has also presented on the Food and Drug Administration’s restriction of edoxaban use in atrial fibrillation patients with normal renal function and on the low rates of ICD use among Medicare patients with low ejection fraction after acute myocardial infarction. Dr. Pokorney’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the JAMA, Lancet, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Heart Rhythm, JACC Electrophysiology, Circulation Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, American Heart Journal, American Journal of Cardiology, and Journal of the American Heart Association.

C. Michael Gibson, MS, MD is an interventional cardiologist, cardiovascular researcher, and educator who pioneered our understanding of the “open artery hypothesis” as well our understanding of the importance of restoring flow downstream in the capillary bed in the “open microvasculature hypothesis” in a heart attack. Gibson has been a leading investigator in trials of thrombolytic agents, glycoprotein 2b3a inhibitor agents, thienopyridines, factor Xa inhibitors, lipid-lowering agents and new devices. Gibson was named one of the world’s most widely published and cited scientists of past decade in 2014 by Thomson Reuters. Gibson founded and led his own Academic Research Organization (PERFUSE) for 30 years & has been the principal investigator of or led core services for >120 clinical trials, the results of which have been published in leading journals. Under Gibson’s direction, PERFUSE created the master database that unified data from over many years of TIMI studies (TIMI 1-50) in nearly 100,000 patients and coordinated data analyses for the TIMI study group and functioned as the TIMI Data Coordinating Center. Gibson has led phase 1-4 clinical trials, and cardiology megatrials of over 15,000 patients which eventuate in international approval of drugs like prasugrel, rivaroxaban, and betrixaban. Gibson also founded www.wikidoc.org and www.wikipatient.org, widely viewed open-source textbooks of medicine. He is Editor-In-Chief of >2,200 active contributors who have edited the content millions of times. Gibson also founded www.clinicaltrialresults.org and has conducted >2,000 TV/video interviews. He has over 340K followers on Twitter with millions of impressions at major meetings. For years, Gibson has been chosen as one of Boston’s Top Doctors & U.S. News & World Report also lists Gibson as one of America’s top doctors. He has held numerous leadership positions in medicine including positions as a Coronary Care Unit Director, a Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory Director, a Chief of Cardiology, and as a Vice-Chairman of Medicine.

Dr. Granger’s primary research interest is in conduct and methodology of large randomized clinical trials in heart disease. He has led a number of large international clinical studies in heart attacks, unstable angina, heart failure, and atrial fibrillation. Additionally, he has lead clinical studies of blood thinners and coronary intervention for heart attacks, stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation, and prevention of heart attack for patients with coronary artery disease. Dr. Granger has been co-director of the Reperfusion of Acute MI in Carolina Emergency Departments (RACE) project that is a North Carolina state-wide program to improve reperfusion care for acute myocardial infarction. He currently serves as the Chairman of the American Heart Association Mission: Lifeline program to improve heart attack care nationally as well as the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guideline committee for heart attack care. He has also studied the effects of genetic variation on heart disease and works with the National Institute of Health and the Federal Drug Administration on evaluation of heart disease and of new drugs. Additionally, Dr. Granger has developed tools to predict which patients are at risk for death, heart attack, and need for hospitalization.

Elaine M Hylek, MD, MPH is a professor of medicine and Associate Director of the Education and Training Division of the BU CTSI. She received her MD from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and a Masters in Public Health (quantitative methods) from Harvard University School of Public Health. She completed her residency training in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. Her research areas include arterial (stroke) and venous thrombosis, anticoagulant therapies, and atrial fibrillation. Recent investigations have included the role of biomarkers in atrial fibrillation related stroke, factors associated with major hemorrhage and antithrombotic therapy, and the efficacy and safety of novel oral anticoagulant drugs. She has served on the Executive Steering Committees for international clinical trials and national registries, Event Adjudication Committees, and Data Safety Monitoring Boards. Dr. Hylek is a Section Editor for Thrombosis and Haemostasis, a member of the International Society of Thrombosis and Haemostasis Executive Committee for World Thrombosis Day, and the Director of the Thrombosis and Anticoagulation Service at Boston Medical Center.

He is the Director of C5Research, the Cleveland Clinic Coordinating Center for Clinical Research, an academic research organization which plans, coordinates, and manages multicenter clinical trials of new pharmacologic or device therapies. Dr. Lincoff's research activities focus on development of therapies to reduce acute and long-term complications of percutaneous coronary revascularization procedures, to optimize therapy for acute coronary ischemic syndromes, or reduce progression or complications of atherosclerosis. He has served as principal investigator or steering committee member of over 20 pivotal trials in ischemic heart disease, enrolling in aggregate nearly 100,000 patients, studying new antithrombotic or metabolic agents in the settings of atherosclerosis or high cardiovascular risk, coronary intervention, heart attack, or unstable angina. Dr. Lincoff also supervises clinical research activities throughout the Cleveland Clinic as Director of the Center for Clinical Research and Vice Chairman for Clinical Research of the Lerner Research Institute. He is a Professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. He holds the Charles and Charlotte Fowler Endowed Chair for Cardiovascular Research at the Cleveland Clinic. Dr. Lincoff has authored or coauthored over 300 peer-reviewed articles, including publications in the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Annals of Internal Medicine, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Journal, and European Heart Journal. He has also authored over 80 book chapters and reviews and presented over 400 lectures at various medical meetings and courses throughout the world. He is the Consulting Editor of the American Journal of Cardiovascular Drugs and serves on editorial boards or as a reviewer for over 15 peer-reviewed scientific journals. Dr. Lincoff serves as the Chair of the Cardiovascular and Renal Drugs Advisory Committee of the United States Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Lincoff earned his undergraduate BS degree in chemical and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 1982 and his MD from Johns Hopkins University in 1986. He completed a residency in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital, Harvard Medical School, a fellowship in cardiovascular diseases at the University of Michigan Medical Center, and a fellowship in interventional cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic. He is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology and a member of the American Heart Association and the Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society.

He was awarded the inaugural Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery in 2020. As well as being a PHRI Scientist, Richard is a cardiac surgeon and intensive care physician at Hamilton Health Sciences. His clinical focus is on aortic valve intervention and aortic surgery. He is a lead investigator for the CIHR funded studies SIRS, LAAOS III, and TRICS III, which have established a network of more than 120 centres to address important questions in his field. He has published more than 90 articles in referred journals. Medically qualified at the University of Toronto, Richard received his specialist training in cardiac surgery and critical care medicine at McMaster University. In 2012, he received his PhD in clinical epidemiology.

Dr. Wolfgang Winkelmayer is a Professor of Medicine, holds the Gordon A. Cain Chair in Nephrology, and serves as Chief of the Section of Nephrology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Originally from Vienna, Austria, he earned a Master of Public Health degree in Health Care Management (1999) and a Doctor of Science degree in Health Policy (2001) from Harvard University. He then spent 8 years on the faculty of Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School where he established himself as a prolific investigator and leader in the discipline of comparative-effectiveness research as it pertains to kidney disease. Before joining Baylor in 2014, he spent 5 years at Stanford University where he was the Director of Clinical Research in the Division of Nephrology. His main areas of research interest include the treatment of anemia as well as the effectiveness and safety of interventions for cardiovascular disease in patients with kidney disease. In addition, he has particular interest in medical publishing. He serves as the Associate Editor for Nephrology of JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, was a Co-Editor of the American Journal of Kidney Disease for 10 years, and has been appointed to several other editorial boards of leading nephrology and epidemiology journals. Since 2016, he has served as the Co-Chair of Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes (KDIGO), the leading guideline group in nephrology.