Dr Cheng Ni earned his PhD and MD at Zhejiang University, where he also finished postdoctoral training and started his cardiology residency. Dr Ni’s research interest mainly focuses on the evolution of cardiac fibrosis under multiple physiopathologic circumstances. He endeavors to unveil potential precise targets towards cardiac adverse remodeling post myocardial infarction and other models like hypertensive heart failure or metabolic cardiomyopathy. In the future, he aims to collaborate with scientists who are interested in conquering cardiac adverse remodeling. Dr Ni belongs to the high IQ club in China—ShengHan club.

Dr Sandhya Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Dr Thomas earned her MD from the McGovern Medical School at UT Health Science Center in Houston. She completed a Nephrology fellowship at Columbia University Medical Center where she received her initial research training in Nephrology. Subsequently, she completed a post-doctoral research fellowship under the mentorship of Dr William Mitch, examining the effects of insulin signaling on muscle metabolism. She went on to join Baylor College of Medicine as faculty and has since focused her career on the mechanisms responsible for CKD-induced cardiomyopathy. Her longterm goal as a physician-scientist is to develop therapeutic strategies to improve the lives of patients suffering from CKD and its consequences. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, traveling, gardening and spending time outdoors with her family.

Dr Jiao Wu earned her PhD from China Agricultural University in Beijing. During this time, she also served as a visiting scholar at the University of Florida. Then in 2016, she joined Dr Sandhya Thomas’ lab in the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine to evaluate mechanisms responsible for impaired muscle metabolism in chronic kidney disease (CKD). Her ongoing research examines the mediators responsible for insulin resistance in CKD. Specifically, she has examined the effects of organ crosstalk and its role in CKD-induced cachexia and cardiomyopathy. Outside of the lab, she enjoys gardening, traveling, cooking and spending time with family.

Dr Zhen Li earned his BS in General Biology at Stony Brook University, and his PhD in Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. He’s currently a postdoctoral researcher under the mentorship of Dr David Lefer. Zhen’s research interests are centered around a gaseous molecule, H2S. His AHA postdoctoral fellowship is aimed at investigating the roles of mitochondrial-specific H2S production in the setting of heart failure with reduced ejection fraction. Outside the lab, Zhen is the husband to a beautiful and supportive wife, a big fan of sports and especially enjoys playing basketball.

Dr Gloria Garoffolo is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Maurizio Pesce’s lab at Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS, Milan, Italy. She completed her PhD in Translational and Molecular Medicine at the University of Milan-Bicocca and currently works at Centro Cardiologico Monzino IRCCS in the group of Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering Unit, dealing with a project concerning the role of mechanosensation in the onset of cardiac fibrosis. Outside of work she enjoys traveling with her family and reading.

Dr Payel Roy is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr Klaus Ley’s lab at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, California. She earned her BS/MS degree in Biotechnology from St. Xavier’s College/Calcutta University, India and completed her PhD with Dr Soumen Basak at National Institute of Immunology, India. Currently she is focused on delineating the antigenic specificities, phenotypic diversity and molecular signatures of autoreactive T cells that modulate atherosclerosis-related inflammation. She wishes to establish an independent research laboratory to explore antigen-dependent communication between innate and adaptive immune cells that underlies pathogenesis in atherosclerosis and other chronic inflammatory diseases with an autoimmune component.

Carolina Downie is an Epidemiology PhD student under the supervisor of Dr Christy Avery in the CVD Genetic Epidemiology Computational Laboratory at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned her BS in Cellular, Molecular, and Developmental Biology from Stanford University, and her MPH in Epidemiology from Columbia University. Her research interests are primarily focused on applying genetic epidemiology, metabolomics and causal inference methods to study cardiometabolic traits in diverse populations. Outside of school, she enjoys reading, running and listening to live music.

Zhiyun Yu is a PhD candidate under the mentorship of Dr Mingxia Gu at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She earned her BS in Life Science from Shandong University in China. She is interested in investigating the development and pathology of cardiac endothelium (e.g., coronary, endocardium) in congenital cardiac disease. Her research interest also focuses on using patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells combined with single-cell transcriptome analysis to study human cardiac disease. Outside of the lab, she likes singing and traveling with friends.

Dr Zhenhui Chen is currently an Associate Professor at Indiana University School of Medicine. He earned his PhD in Medical Biophysics from Indiana University and finished his postdoctoral training at Johns Hopkins University. Research interests in his lab involve biochemical and biophysical characterizations of ion transports (pumps, ion channels and their regulators) in the heart. In addition to the characterization of the phospholemman and sodium-potassium ATPase, he studies the cardiac calcium pump and phospholamban system. A particular interest of his lab concerns the roles of protein interactions and intracellular protein trafficking in regulation of calcium handling in cardiac myocytes.