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Event

Cardiac Surgery Grand Rounds > McGill Stikeman Visiting Professorship Day: Dr. Joanna Chikwe

Thursday, May 15, 2025 07:30to08:30

"What They Don’t Teach in Daylight: The 3:00 am Cardiac Surgery Curriculum"

Speaker: Dr. Joanna Chikwe, MD, FRCS, FACC

Dr. Chikwe is Chairman of the Department of Cardiac Surgery, and the Irina and George Schaeffer Distinguished Chair in Cardiac Surgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. She is Editor-in-Chief of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

Dr. Chikwe’s clinical focus is robotic mitral repair. She leads a cardiac surgery program that is ranked by U.S News and World Report among the top 3 nationally, and directs three affiliate cardiac surgery programs within the Cedars-Sinai Health System. The heart and lung transplant programs, the structural heart program and the robotic cardiac surgery program are among the largest in the US. The department’s research is supported by grants including four NIH R01 awards, and encompasses translational science, comparative outcomes, device development and multi-center clinical trials.

Dr. Chikwe’s research focuses on therapies for valvular heart disease, with over 250 peer reviewed publications including contributions in the NEJM, Lancet and JAMA. She is the national PI of the NHLBI sponsored pivotal randomized PRIMARY trial with the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network. Dr. Chikwe is also editor of Annals of Thoracic Surgery Short Reports, an editorial board member of JACC, and JTCVS, and co-Chair of the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions.

Dr. Chikwe founded the AATS Careers College and the Sir Magdi Yacoub Career Development Award to support diversity in cardiothoracic surgery; served as Chair of the AATS Adult Cardiac Education Committee establishing the AATS Webinars series; Co-Chair of the AATS Evarts A. Graham Memorial Traveling Fellowship Committee; serves on the AATS Leadership Academy Committee and is author of three textbooks in multiple editions, published by Oxford University Press.

Dr. Chikwe studied medicine at Oxford University after studying art for two years in Florence, Italy. She completed cardiac surgery residency in the UK, where she was awarded Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS). She won the 2006 Society of Cardiac and Thoracic Surgeons Cardiac Scholarship, to undertake an advanced fellowship in mitral and aortic surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where she subsequently joined the faculty until 2019 when she was recruited to Cedars- Sinai, Los Angeles as the inaugural Chairman of the Department of Cardiac Surgery. Jo runs 10k daily, and supports Norwich F.C. because there’s always hope.