Dr. Iftikhar Kullo Named Associate Director of Cardiovascular Research Center, Mellowes Center
Iftikhar Kullo, MD, will be joining Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) as a professor of medicine in the division of cardiovascular medicine with a secondary appointment in the Data Science Institute. He will also be joining the leadership of the Cardiovascular Research Center (CVRC) and Linda T. and John A. Mellowes Center for Genomic Sciences and Precision Medicine (Mellowes Center) at MCW as an associate director.
A world-renowned physician-scientist, his research is focused on the genetic epidemiology of coronary heart disease and lipid disorders, as well as implementation of genomic medicine. He served as a consultant in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, and held the academic rank of professor in the Mayo School of Medicine.
Additionally, he headed the Atherosclerosis and Lipid Genomics Laboratory, chaired the Cardiovascular Genomics Task Force, directed the Early Atherosclerosis and Familial Hypercholesterolemia Clinics, and established the first Cardiovascular Genomics Fellowship training program in the country.
Dr. Kullo’s work on genomic discovery and implementation, particularly in the area of polygenic risk assessment, has been widely cited. He has published more than 440 scientific papers and has mentored more than 100 medical students, residents, fellows, and junior faculty. Dr. Kullo has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2003 and served as a principal investigator in the eMERGE and PRIMED networks of the National Human Genome Research Institute. In 2019, he was nominated to the National Advisory Council on Human Genome Research by the secretary of the United States Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Kullo is deeply interested in implementing genomic medicine at scale for disease prevention and improving health in populations.
In this role, Dr. Kullo’s research expertise, clinical knowledge, and leadership experience will advance the missions of both the CVRC and Mellowes Center. He will join director Michael Widlansky, MD, MPH, Northwestern Mutual Professor of Cardiology; associate directors Mary Sorci-Thomas, PhD, Julie Freed, MD, PhD, Ze Zheng, MBBS, PhD; and assistant directors William Hughes, PhD, Allison DeVan, PhD, and Andrew Spearman, MD of the CVRC. In the Mellowes Center, he joins director Raul Urrutia, MD, Warren P. Knowles Professor of Genomics and Precision Medicine, Michael Zimmerman, PhD, Angela Mathison, PhD, Xiaowu Gai, PhD, Linda T. and John A. Mellowes Endowed Chair in Systems Biology; and associate directors Donald Basel, MD, Jennifer Geurts, MS, CGC, William Hogan, MD, MS, Mary T. and Ted D. Kellner Chair of Data Science, Razelle Kurzrock, MD, Brian Smith, PhD, Brian Volkman, PhD, and Calvin Williams, MD, PhD.