People

Project Leads

Zahi Fayad, PhD (Overall Principal Investigator, Project Lead – Admin Core & Project 3)

Professor of Radiology and Medicine (Cardiology), Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Director, Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII)
Director, Cardiovascular Imaging

Dr. Zahi Fayad is Professor of Radiology and Medicine (Cardiology) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He is also the founding Director of the Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Institute (BMEII) and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Radiology. Dr. Fayad’s interdisciplinary and discipline bridging research – from engineering to biology and from pre-clinical to clinical investigations – has been dedicated to the detection and prevention of cardiovascular disease with many seminal contributions in the field of multimodality biomedical imaging (MR, CT, PET and PET/MR) and nanomedicine. His work has recently expanded in understanding the effect of stress on the immune system and cardiovascular disease.  For this Program Project, he will be responsible for the overall coordination of activities and scientific integrity.

For more on the Fayad Lab, click here.

Venkatesh Mani, PhD (Project Lead – Imaging Core, Co-Investigator – Project 3)

Assistant Professor of Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Director, Cardiovascular Imaging Clinical Trials Units (CICTU)

As a BMEII faculty member and CICTU Director, Dr. Venkatesh Mani works to translate novel multi-modality imaging techniques for use in multi-center clinical trials. His main interests are in imaging of cardiovascular diseases, specifically focusing on atherosclerosis, thrombosis and their complications using FDG-PET, CT and MRI. He has been responsible for several pharma driven clinical trials using vascular imaging as endpoints. As Director of the Imaging Core, he will be responsible for developing and implementing the standardized image acquisition and analysis protocols for all the clinical projects and for coordination of inter institution data transfers and ensuring that all data acquired are compliant with GCP guidelines and that systems and processes are in line with FDA 21 CFR-Part 11 requirements.

For more on the Mani Lab, click here.

Fil Swirski, PhD (Project Lead – Project 1)

Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)

Dr. Fil Swirski is a Principal Investigator at MGH’s Center for Systems Biology, the Patricia and Scott Eston MGH Research Scholar, and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.  The Swirski lab focuses on innate and inflammatory mechanisms in cardiovascular disease.

For more on the Swirski Lab, click here.

Willem Mulder, PhD (Project Lead – Project 2)

Professor of Radiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
Director, Nanomedicine – BMEII

Dr. Willem Mulder is Professor of Radiology at ISMMS and the Academic Medical Center of the University at Amsterdam. He is also the Director of the Nanomedicine Laboratory at BMEII.  Its mission is to develop and advance nanomedicinal approaches to allow a better understanding, identification and treatment of the most detrimental pathologies today: cardiovascular disease and cancer. The research projects range from fundamental, including nanotechnologies to better understand lipoprotein biology, to translational, with one of the developed nanotherapies being in clinical trials.

For more on the Mulder Lab, click here.