Keynote Speaker
Dr. Paul M. Ridker
Brigham & Women's Hospital
Friday, April 30 8:45-9:45 a.m.
Paul M. Ridker is the Eugene Braunwald Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and directs the Center for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, a translational research unit at the Brigham and Women's Hospital that focuses on the molecular and genetic epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases. Dr. Ridker's primary research brings together classical tools of large-scale, population-based epidemiology with emerging genetic and molecular techniques designed to improve our ability to predict and prevent thrombotic occlusion. Particular areas of interest involve molecular and genetic determinants of hemostasis, thrombosis, and inflammation with a focus on "predictive medicine," early disease diagnosis, and the underlying causes and prevention of acute coronary syndromes. Much of Dr Ridker's work has focused on inflammatory mediators of vascular risk and the use of inflammatory biomarkers such as CRP to improve cardiovascular risk prediction, with a strong background in statistical methods, clinical trial methodology, and study design.
Dr Ridker has served as the principal investigator or Study Chair of multiple clinical trials funded by federal and non-federal sources including PREVENT, PRINCE, LANCET, VAL-MARC and the ongoing JUPITER trial being conducted in 26 countries. With regard to genetic epidemiology, Dr Ridker is currently Principal Investigator of the Women's Genome Health Study, a 27,000 participant genome wide association study based upon participants in the NIH-funded Women's Health Study that is designed to ascertain the genetic determinants of a wide variety of vascular disorders as well as lipid and inflammatory intermediate phenotypes. Since 2003, Dr Ridker has been a Reynolds Investigator at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and received additional research support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Leducq Foundation.
Updated May 27, 2010