This award was established to recognise the contribution of Viviane Conraads, who was head of the Heart Failure Clinic of the University Hospital of Antwerp, and responsible for cardiac rehabilitation and the heart transplant programme.
She played an important role in the EAPC as a nucleus member of the Exercise, Basic and Translational Research section and as the EAPC representative in the Congress Programme Committee.
Congratulations to John William (Bill) McEvoy, 2024 Viviane Conraads Award winner
"It is a huge honour for me to receive the Viviane Conraads award from EAPC. First, I think that preventive cardiology needs to be supported and promoted in Europe. So many cardiovascular events should never happen, and we know from the work of the ESC-EuroASPIRE research team, of which I am a proud member, that there is much work to do to bridge the implementation gap in primary and secondary prevention. Therefore, we need the best and brightest young cardiology trainees to be attracted to preventive cardiology and this award is one way to facilitate that. Second, this award recognises the immense contribution and achievements of Dr Conraads, who was a woman in cardiology. Cardiology as a field should better trumpet the major contributions of women to our profession. It is immensely satisfying to me that preventive cardiology is an area of cardiology that in my view has taken a lead on this, with this award named for Dr Conraads being one example. Third, I am proud to be the first Irish recipient of this award and see the award as a reflection of the many male and female giants of Anglo-Irish preventive cardiology, past and present, on whose shoulders I merely stand."
Bill McEvoy, MB BCh MHS PhD, is an academic cardiologist interested in all aspects of preventive cardiology. After graduating with first class honours from University College Cork School of Medicine in 2004, he spent four years training in Ireland, mostly in the Mater Hospital in Dublin. In 2008 he undertook further internal medicine training in the Osler residency programme at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He stayed at Johns Hopkins for cardiology fellowship, a Master of Health Science in cardiovascular epidemiology, and was subsequently on the Johns Hopkins faculty for three years. He was recruited back to Ireland in 2018 as Professor of Preventive Cardiology at the University of Galway. Since then, he has also served as the Medical and Research Director for the Irish National Institute for Prevention and Cardiovascular Health. He has an active clinical practice that informs all aspects of his research. His interests include diastolic blood pressure, cardiovascular biomarkers, aspirin, and subclinical atherosclerosis imaging. As of March 2024, he has approximately 300 peer reviewed publications. He is co-PI for the ESC-EuroASPIRE-6 study and co-chair for the 2024 ESC guideline on arterial hypertension. Most importantly, Bill is a proud dad and husband.
Bill McEvoy will present his research at the Viviane Conraads Award session on 27 April at 11:30 at ESC Preventive Cardiology in Athens.
Past awardees
2023
Associate Prof. Thijs Eijsvogels
Thijs Eijsvogels, PhD is an Associate Professor of Exercise Physiology. His research training started at Radboud University (PhD degree, NL), followed by postdoctoral fellowships at Hartford Hospital (USA) and Liverpool John Moores University (UK). Dr. Eijsvogels is interested in the physiological and cardiovascular responses to acute and chronic exercise training. His research is focused on the benefits and potential deleterious effects of exercise across the whole physical activity spectrum: from cardiovascular disease patients demonstrating excessive sedentary behavior to veteran athletes performing long-term, high-volume, high-intensity exercise training. He currently leads the Exercise Physiology research group at the Radboud University Medical Center (Nijmegen, NL), with the aim to optimise exercise prescription for cardiovascular health improvement. For this purpose, research techniques from the fields of physiology, cardiology and epidemiology are integrated in his multidisciplinary team.
2022
Associate Prof. Véronique Cornelissen
Assoc. Prof. Véronique Cornelissen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation at the Department of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven).
In close collaboration with the department of cardiology of the University Hospitals in Leuven, she investigates the use of exercise therapy in the primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular diseases.
Current research interests focus on:
- identification and validation of exercise therapies that aim to optimally improve physical fitness and cardiovascular health;
- enhancing implementation of evidence-based exercise guidelines by the development and validation of innovative technological solutions;
- understanding determinants of uptake, adherence and responses to exercise therapy in patients at risk for cardiovascular disease or patients with established cardiovascular disease.
2021
Dr. Stefano Caselli
Dr. Stefano Caselli, PhD is a clinical cardiologist with a special interest in cardiovascular imaging, cardiomyopathies, and sports cardiology. His clinical research has focused on the athlete’s heart and specifically on the determinants of cardiac remodeling and differential diagnosis with cardiomyopathies. He is currently a nucleus member of the Sports Cardiology Section of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology and participated in the development of recommendation documents regarding sport activity in different cardiovascular conditions. In 2018 he was co-chairperson of the joint European Association of Preventive Cardiology and European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging recommendation document on the use and interpretation of cardiovascular imaging in athletes.
He obtained his Medical Doctor, Cardiology Fellowship and PhD Title at Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. He trained in cardiovascular imaging including advanced echocardiography (Boston, USA), cardiovascular magnetic resonance (Berlin, Germany) and cardiac computed tomography (Zurich, Switzerland). He worked for 10 years in Rome as a cardiology consultant for the Italian Olympic Committee and as a hospital cardiologist.
Since 2018 he has been a cardiology consultant at Cardiovascular Center Zurich, Hirslanden Klinik im Park in Zurich, Switzerland.
2020
Dr. Maryam Kavousi
Maryam Kavousi MD PhD is Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology. She has trained as a family physician and cardiovascular epidemiologist. Her research comprises primary prevention of cardiovascular disease and in particular focusses on investigating sex and gender differences in the entire cardio-metabolic spectrum. Dr. Kavousi works together with various disciplines including clinical cardiology and internal medicine, basic science, bioinformatics, and biostatistics. These multidisciplinary efforts serve to identify and tackle the knowledge gaps in cardiovascular field in a timely manner.
2019
Professor Emanuele Di Angelantonio
Prof. Di Angelantonio has contributed significantly to improvements in healthcare related to prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). His work has helped resolve important clinical and public health controversies through its combination of powerful, systematic, and detailed analysis of prospective epidemiological data on CVD risk factors.
2018
Dr Trine Moholdt (Norway)
Dr. Trine Moholdt is physiotherapist and PhD. She works as a research fellow at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Dr Moholdt has contributed to the field of exercise as medicine in primary and secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease.
2016
Professor Johan Sundström (Sweden)
Prof. Sundström is Professor of Epidemiology at Uppsala University, Scientific Director of Uppsala Clinical Research Center (UCR), and works clinically at the Department of Cardiology of Uppsala University Hospital.
2015
Professor Sanjay Sharma (United Kingdom)
Prof. Sharma has been Professor of Inherited Cardiac Diseases and Sports Cardiology and Head of Cardiac Research Center, St George’s University of London since 2010.
His academic interests include sports cardiology, cardiomyopathies, ion channel disease and exercise physiology.
For more information, contact the EAPC Team.
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