Melvin Scheinman

Dr. Prystowsky is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. He completed his internal medicine training at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York City, and training in cardiology and clinical electrophysiology at Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina.
From 1979 to 1986, Dr. Prystowsky was Director of the Electrophysiology Laboratory at the Indiana University School of Medicine. In 1986, he was Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Center at Duke. He joined St. Vincent in 1988 and is Director of the Cardiac Arrhythmia Service. He is also Consulting Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center.
He has authored, Cardiac Arrhythmias: An Integrated Approach for the Clinician; and Clinical Electrophysiology Review, and over 780 publications concerning cardiac arrhythmias. He was the Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology for 15 years.
Additionally, he is past chairman of the American Heart Association’s Committee on Electrocardiography and Electrophysiology, past president of the Heart Rhythm Society, and past chairman of the Test Writing Committee for Clinical Electrophysiology for the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from Pennsylvania State University (2007), the Distinguished Physician Award from St. Vincent Hospital (2014), the HRS Distinguished Teacher Award (2002), President’s Award (2009), and Pioneer in Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology Award (2018).
Dr Prystowsky has been married to his wife Bonnie for 56 years, and has two sons, David and Daniel, and four grandchildren, Dylan, Laila, Amber and Noah.

Ulrich (Uli) Schotten, MD, PhD
Prof. of Cardiac Electrophysiology
Chair of Dept. of Physiology
Principal Investigator Pathophysiology of Atrial Fibrillation
Maastricht University
Maastricht, The Netherlands

Professor Schotten studied medicine at the universities of Aachen, Glasgow, and Valetta. After 4 years of training in cardiology at the University Hospital of Aachen, he defended his thesis “Mechanisms of Atrial Paralysis in Atrial Fibrillation” at Maastricht University. In 2011, he was appointed professor of cardiac electrophysiology at the Department of Physiology in Maastricht and became chair of the Department in 2019. His research interests include cellular and integrated actions of antiarrhythmic drugs, the development of substrates for the perpetuation of atrial fibrillation, invasive and non-invasive quantification of the substrate of atrial fibrillation, interaction between atrial fibrillation and activation of the coagulation system, and three-dimensional computer models of atrial fibrillation. He is coordinator of the Dutch AF networks RACE V and EmbRACE and PI in numerous national and international research networks. He published >270 research articles and served as member of the European task force for the development of the ESC guidelines for management of atrial fibrillation in 2010, 2012, and 2016. Furthermore, he is member of the Executive Committee of the Network of Competence for Atrial Fibrillation (AFNET) and co-founder of the Maastricht University spin-off company YourRhythmics BV.

Publications:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=schotten+u

Vivek Reddy, MD is the Helmsley Trust Professor of Medicine at the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York, and a Visiting Professor of Cardiology at Homolka Hospital in Prague, Czechia. He investigates advanced arrhythmia therapies – including catheter ablation for AFib and VT, and device therapies for stroke prevention and heart failure.

He conducted many “first-in-human” studies including the first cryoballoon ablation for atrial fibrillation in 2004, the first use of a force-sensing catheter for AF ablation, and the first pulsed field ablation catheter procedures for AF in 2017. He was also lead author on a seminal study, SMASH-VT (published in the New England Journal of Medicine) on the use of prophylactic catheter ablation to prevent shocks in patients receiving defibrillators. In 2012, he implanted the world’s first miniature leadless pacemaker, and in 2022, the world’s first dual-chamber leadless pacemaker (with Petr Neuzil). He has been instrumental in the development of mechanical approaches to stroke prevention in AF. He has been the principal investigator (or on the Steering Committees) of numerous multicenter clinical trials including PROTECT-AF, PREVAIL, ASAP-TOO, PRAGUE-17, OPTION, CATALYST, CHAMPION-AF, CAPTURE2, INTERCEPT, LEADLESS II, HEARTLIGHT, TOCCASTAR, ADVENT, Sphere Per-AF, FLOW-AF, ADVANTAGE-AF and PULSAR.

He has served as co-Director of the Annual Boston Atrial Fibrillation Symposium since 2005, and founded and Directs the Annual International Symposium on Ventricular Arrhythmias since 2006, as well as founded and Directs the PFA Live at HRS since 2024 (along with his colleague, Srinivas Dukkipati).

Section Head of Cardiac Electrophysiology
Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering
Graham and Brenda Siddall Endowed Professor in Arrhythmia Research
University of Washington, Seattle WA