Stanford Faculty

Our large multi-disciplinary team consists of twelve cardiologists specializing in the care of patients with advanced heart failure, cardiac transplant and mechanical circulatory support. This group is complemented by a nurse manager, four cardiac transplant/MCS advanced practice providers, three post-transplant nurse coordinators, three VAD coordinators, and two pre-transplant coordinators.  Our team is supported by transplant pharmacists, dietitians, social workers, financial coordinators, a research nurse manager and two research coordinators. The Stanford heart transplant and MCS services work closely with consultants from the immunocompromised infectious disease program, psychiatry, and other consult services.  The Heart Failure clinic is also supported by advance practice providers and nurse coordinators.

Dr. Ashley joined the Stanford faculty in 2006 after completing his medical residency and PhD in molecular cardiology at the University of Oxford, and is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine. His group is focused on the application of genomics to medicine. In 2010, he led the team that carried out the first clinical interpretation of a human genome. The paper, published in the Lancet, became one of the most cited articles in clinical medicine that year. His team now applies genome sequencing to the diagnosis of patients at Stanford Hospital where Dr Ashley directs the Clinical Genome Service and the Center for Inherited Cardiovascular Disease. Dr Ashley is a recipient of the National Innovation Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's New Innovator Award. He is a Principal Investigator of the Myocardial Applied Genomics Network (MAGnet), a member of the leadership group of the AHA Council on Functional Genomics, and a member of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health. Dr. Ashley mentors many cardiology fellows performing basic and translational research related to cardiovascular genomics

Dr. Fowler, who trained in Britain and came to Stanford in 1982, is Director of the Stanford Heart Failure Program and the Medical Director of the Cardiomyopathy Center at Stanford. A leader in the field of heart failure, Dr. Fowler played a pivotal role in developing the use of anti-adrenergic therapy for the treatment of patients with chronic heart failure.  Under an IND for metoprolol in the 1980s, Dr. Fowler described improvement in contractile function in patients treated with metoprolol. After serving on the steering committee of the U.S. Carvedilol Heart Failure Study Group and other landmark trials, Dr. Fowler helped usher in the beta-blocker era of heart failure therapy. He also described the determinants of poor survival in heart failure patients based upon exercise testing with measurement of gas exchange, and established early guidelines for the selection of heart transplant recipients. Dr. Fowler’s technique of the “nitroprusside challenge” is now used commonly worldwide to assess the risk of post-transplant mortality due to pre-operative pulmonary hypertension. Finally, he continues to investigate the intersection between insulin resistance and heart failure. Dr. Fowler currently attends in the CCU and runs a busy heart failure outpatient panel where he works closely with general cardiology and advanced heart failure fellows on medical management, as well as patient evaluation for heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support. Despite his advancing age, Dr. Fowler still makes lively contributions at the weekly cardiomyopathy center conference as well as the clinical heart transplant weekly meeting, and remains active in mentoring the research and career development of young physicians interested in careers in heart failure.

Dr. Haddad trained in general cardiology at the Montreal Heart Institute and subsequently completed advanced fellowships in cardiovascular imaging, heart failure, heart transplantation and pulmonary hypertension at Stanford. He is a member of the American Heart Association (AHA) Organizing Committee and the World Health Organization (WHO) Task Force on Right Ventricular Physiology. Dr. Haddad is co-director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Biomarker and Phenotypic Core Laboratory. The research objectives of the laboratory are threefold: (1) to establish better metrics for the evaluation of cardiovascular function with a special focus of right heart function, (2) to better understand the immunological basis of cardiovascular recovery, and (3) to serve as a core reference laboratory. Dr. Haddad attends on the inpatient heart transplant and pulmonary hypertension services, in the echocardiography laboratory, and on the general cardiology service at Stanford.

Dr. Stephanie Hsiao is a clinical assistant professor at Stanford, School of Medicine and a full-time advanced heart failure/transplant cardiologist at the Palo Alto VA.  She grew up in Taipei, Taiwan.  She attended undergraduate at UC Berkeley and obtained her Master’s degree in Pharmacology at Cambridge University in the UK. She obtained her M.D. from UC San Francisco. She completed her Internal Medicine residency and General Cardiology fellowship at the California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, where she served as both the chief resident and chief cardiology fellow. She completed her advanced heart failure/transplant cardiology fellowship at Stanford in June 2022.   She has a strong interest in medical education and quality improvement.  Her clinical interests include HF outreach in the VA health care systems, women’s heart health, and AHFTX fellowship curriculum design/planning.   Her research interests include multi-organ transplantations and advocacy of diversity-equity-inclusion in advanced HF therapies.  She plans to lead a career in medical education and quality improvement to deliver exceptional and equitable care for patients needing advanced HF therapies.

Dr. Hunt, often fondly referred to as “the first transplant cardiologist” is the Medical Director of the Stanford heart transplant program and fellowship program director. Dr. Hunt established the Stanford heart transplant fellowship program in 1989 and has personally trained several generations of leaders in the field. In addition, Dr. Hunt has chaired the ACC/AHA heart failure guidelines committee, is associate editor of Hurst’s The Heart, and was Chair of the ABIM test committee writing the first exam on advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. Finally, Dr. Hunt is past-president of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT), and has received numerous international awards including the AHA’s Laennec Master Clinician Award, the ISHLT Lifetime Achievement Award, the AST Senior Achievement Award in Clinical Transplantation, and has been named a Master of the American College of Cardiology.

Dr. Kawana joined Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology group in 2018 as an Instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. He completed his internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine and heart failure training at Stanford. He also completed postdoctoral research fellowship under Dr. James Spudich in Department of Biochemistry. He sees advanced heart failure patients in clinic, and attends on inpatient service taking care of post-heart transplant patients and patients on MCS support. His research interests are in the fundamental mechanism of inherited cardiomyopathies, and he studies the effect of gene mutation on the cardiac sarcomere function using cutting-edge biochemical and biophysical approach, which would lead to development of novel pharmacotherapy that directly modulates cardiac muscle protein.

Dr. Khush is an Associate Professor of Medicine, Director of Heart Transplant Research, and Co-Director of the Stanford AHFTC fellowship program. Dr. Khush is a clinical investigator who is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association to study donor evaluation and selection for heart transplantation, as well as biomarkers of post-transplant outcomes. Dr. Khush’s innovative multi-disciplinary research team has recently developed a donor-derived cell-free DNA assay for the accurate and non-invasive diagnosis of heart transplant rejection, as well as virus and antibody-sequencing techniques for monitoring overall level of immunosuppression in solid organ transplant recipients. Dr. Khush attends on the inpatient and outpatient heart transplant service and greatly enjoys mentoring our fellows.

Dr. Eldrin Foster Lewis is the Simon H. Stertzer, MD Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Cardiovascular Medicine Division at Stanford University.  A cardiovascular medicine and heart transplantation specialist, he spends his time in the CCU/heart failure service, VAD/transplant service and in ambulatory care.  He is a staunch advocate for equity and diversity in research, pipeline development, and clinical care.

Dr. Lewis received his medical degree at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine (now Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania). He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiovascular disease at BWH. He also completed a M.P.H. at Harvard School of Public Health.  Dr. Lewis is board certified in cardiovascular disease and heart failure and transplantation.  He spent 25 years at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital prior to moving to Stanford University in March 2020.

His clinical interests include chronic heart failure, heart transplant, quality of life and clinical trials. The author of over 200 peer-reviewed publications, Dr. Lewis’s research focuses on improving the clinical usefulness of quality of life (QOL) assessments, as well as preventing the progression of cardiovascular disease to preserve overall quality of life for cardiovascular patients. His research has received support from the American Heart Association, NHLBI/NIH, PCORI and various industry sponsors.  He has several leadership positions within the AHA and other organizations, including Chair of Scientific Publishing Committee and Immediate Past Chair of Council on Clinical Cardiology.

He is looking forward to continuing to work with the AHFTC fellows in a) clinical education both on the inpatient and outpatient settings, b) career advice/mentorship with particular focus on how to integrate academic interests with clinical interests, and c) fostering a rich environment to develop diverse pathways to a fruitful academic career as budding clinicians, clinician scientist, and clinician educators.

Dr. Mamic joined the Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Cardiology group in 2021 as an Instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. She completed her internal medicine, cardiovascular medicine, and heart failure training at Stanford. Dr. Mamic also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in Dr. Michael Snyder’s lab in the Department of Genetics. Her clinical activity includes attending in outpatient clinic (heart failure, post-transplant, and VAD clinics), on inpatient service (transplant/VAD and HF service), and CCU. Dr. Mamic especially enjoys teaching services and working with our excellent cardiology and advanced HF fellows. Her research focuses on understanding the role of the gut microbiome in cardiovascular pathophysiology, specifically in the context of HF and heart transplant.  

Dr. Parikh is cardiologist specializing in the care of patients with inherited cardiovascular diseases. She completed clinical cardiology fellowship at Stanford School of Medicine and her medical residency at the University of California, San Francisco. Funded by research grant from the NIH, she currently studies multiple causes of heart muscle disease in the laboratory. She has a particular clinical and scientific interest in inherited arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathies, which are an increasingly recognized disease entity. Dr. Parikh is currently using patient genetic data, molecular biology and beating cardiac cells to study the genetic causes of this disease.

Dr. Sallam is a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. Dr. Sallam completed his residency, fellowship and advanced fellowship at Stanford and subsequently joined the Heart Failure group at Stanford in 2015 attending on the CCU, MCS and Post-transplant services. Dr. Sallam is the medical director of Advanced Heart Failure and Transplant Program at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. His research and clinical interest focus on familial dilated cardiomyopathy, risk stratification and management of arrhythmic features of cardiomyopathy and cardiomyopathy-arrhythmia overlap syndromes.  Dr. Sallam is interested in combining patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocyte models with other clinical and translational models to augment diagnosis and therapy for patients with cardiac disorders. 

Alex Sandhu, MD, MS is a cardiologist with a special interest in the care of patients with advanced heart failure. He graduated from the seven-year combined BA-MD program at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine. He completed an internal medicine residency at Stanford University, spending 16 weeks at Makerere Hospital in Uganda as part of the Global Health track. He subsequently obtained completed a Masters in Health Services Research at Stanford while acting as a fellow in health services research at the VA and Stanford's Center for Health Policy/Primary Care and Outcomes Research. He then completed fellowships in cardiology and advanced heart failure and transplant at Stanford before joining the faculty. He is an active heart failure researcher who focuses on health economics, the implementation of high-value care strategies, and comparative effectiveness. He is currently funded by a K23 career development award. In his free time, he enjoys playing soccer and teaching his son Kyle to play soccer (but not to head the ball).

Dr. Teuteberg joined the Stanford faculty as the Section Chief of Heart Failure, Cardiac Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support in 2017.  His clinical research interests include outcomes after mechanical circulatory support, right ventricular dysfunction, and immunosuppression after cardiac transplantation.  He has been involved in most of the major trials of mechanical support, is chair of the INTERMACS RV Task Force and was a lead author on the first guidelines for mechanical support.  Dr. Teuteberg has served in many leadership positions in societies, including the Chair of the Thoracic and Critical Care Community of Practice in the American Society of Transplantation and become President of the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation in 2018.  In addition to his research and administrative duties, Dr. Teuteberg remains clinically active attending on inpatient services and in the transplant, VAD and heart failure outpatient clinics.

Dr. Vagelos has been Director of the Stanford Coronary Care Unit since 1990, and is a member of the interventional cardiology and pre-transplant heart failure teams.  His interests have focused over the years on the pharmacologic and mechanical support of acute and chronic heart failure patients, with additional interests in heart disease resulting from radiation therapy as well as chemotherapy induced cardio-toxicity.  More recently Dr. Vagelos has been involved in the trial of the Mitra-Clip in chronic heart failure patients with functional mitral regurgitation.  Supporting a positive CCU environment that optimizes quality patient care as well resident and fellow teaching is Dr. Vagelos’s highest priority. 

Dr. Valantine received her M.B.B.S. degree from London University, cardiology fellowship at Stanford, and Doctor of Medicine from London University. She was appointed Assistant Professor of Medicine, rising to full Professor of Medicine in 2000, and becoming the inaugural Senior Associate Dean for Diversity and Leadership, in 2004. She pursued a data-driven transformative approach to this work, receiving the NIH director’s pathfinder award. Dr. Francis Collins, NIH director, recruited her in 2014 as the inaugural NIH Chief Officer for Scientific Workforce diversity, and as a tenured investigator in the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s intramural research program where she established the laboratory of transplantation genomics. Dr. Valantine is a nationally recognized pioneer in her field, with over 200 peer-reviewed publications, patents, and sustained NIH funding. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 for both her pioneering research in organ transplantation and workforce diversity.

Dr. Wheeler is an Instructor in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine. His areas of clinical expertise include inherited and infiltrative cardiomyopathies, neuromuscular disease associated cardiomyopathy, and mechanical circulatory support. His clinical research interests include investigating novel therapies for cardiomyopathy, including participation in multi-center randomized trials for cardiac amyloidosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and mechanical circulatory support. He is the adult clinical lead and executive director of the Undiagnosed Diseases Clinical Site at Stanford, one of seven NIH-funded clinical sites of the Undiagnosed Diseases Network. Dr. Wheeler is involved in several additional ongoing initiatives in cardiovascular genomics and genetics, including a study of microRNAs and DNA methylation and risk of atherosclerosis in the Women’s Health Initiative. In addition, he maintains active computational and basic research interests, with the goal of improving diagnosis and treatment options for patients with cardiomyopathy by leveraging next-generation sequencing technologies, rich bioinformatics datasets, and bench research in model systems of inherited cardiomyopathy. During his remaining time he enjoys biking, hiking, swimming, and snow sports with his wife and sons.  

Dr. Witteles is a long-time member of the Stanford community, having been here since internal medicine residency.  He is now a member of the heart failure faculty and frequently attends in the Stanford CCU.  He has three clinical and research areas of expertise: amyloidosis, sarcoidosis, and cardiac complications of cancer therapy (“Cardio-Oncology”).  Dr. Witteles is the Co-Director of the Stanford Amyloid Center, one of the country’s largest multidisciplinary centers for advanced care of patients with amyloidosis. In addition, Dr. Witteles is Program Director for the Stanford University Internal Medicine Residency Training Program, supervising 118 residents and helping to oversee the Department’s fellowship programs