Elaine Wan

Douglas L. Packer, MD, FHRS

Dr. Packer is internationally known in cardiac electrophysiology and currently is at the Intermountain Medical Center. He was the past John M. Nasseff, Sr., Professor in Cardiovascular Diseases, at Mayo Clinic,. and the Director of the Translational Electrophysiology Research Laboratory. He completed an internship, residency and fellowship at Duke University, where he was on staff before coming to Mayo. His honors and awards include the ACC 2019 Distinguished Scientist Award (Translational) (2019). Dr. Packer is active in the Heart Rhythm Society where he is a past president. Dr. Packer lectures widely on cardiac arrhythmias. He has written or co-authored more than 419 publications and 644 abstracts. He has lectured extensively in national and international meetings, giving over 1,872 invited lectures in 41 countries. He has served on the executive committee of the NIH MUSTT, SCD-HeFT, and HAT Trials. Dr. Packer is also the International Principal Investigator of the CABANA and the Upcoming CABANA HF Trial.
His translational work focuses on the mechanisms and ablation of AF and VT, autologous fibroblast modulation of electrical impulse propagation, and the development of particle therapy for catheter-free ablation of arrhythmias. His clinical work investigates 4/5 dimensional integrated image-guided ablation, and the development of new energy sources for the modification of cardiac tissue. His work has been funded in part by private foundations, the American Heart Association, and the NIH. Dr. Packer holds US and European patents in the development of intracardiac ultrasound, 4/5D imaging, and particle therapy ablation.

Dr. Michael Shehata is a board-certified Cardiac Electrophysiologist for the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is the Division Chief of Cardiac Electrophysiology and Director for the Interventional Electrophysiology Laboratory and the Clinical Cardiology Electrophysiology Fellowship Program. Dr. Shehata specializes in catheter ablation for complex atrial and ventricular arrhythmias, cardiac electronic implanted devices such as pacemakers and defibrillators, conduction system pacing, and left atrial appendage occlusion. He has an active research program and has acted as the principal investigator (PI) on multiple groundbreaking trials in novel ablation therapies for atrial fibrillation using pulsed field ablation, as well as leading the MICRA clinical trial and AVEIR DR trial at Cedars implanting novel completely leadless pacemakers in humans. He is currently also working on the use of unique mapping technologies in human atrial fibrillation that use machine learning to predict key drivers of atrial fibrillation unique to the individual patient with the goal of improving outcomes in treating this challenging arrhythmia. Dr. Shehata received his undergraduate degree at University of California Los Angeles in Chemical Engineering and earned his medical degree at University of California San Diego School of Medicine. He trained in cardiology and cardiac electrophysiology at Cedars-Sinai and then went on to UCLA as a junior faculty member in the Cardiac Arrhythmia Center.

Boris Schmidt is an interventional electrophysiologist at CCCB Farnkfurt. His scientific and clinical interest focusses on catheter ablation of arrhythmias, in particular using new technologies. He is also interested in interventional stroke prophylaxis using left atrial appendage closure devices. BS has been involved in many clinical studies.