Vasan Ramachandran Named Visiting Professor at the Charite Hospital and Berlin Institute of Health

Vasan Ramachandran, MD, FAHA, FACC, professor of medicine and principal investigator and director of the  Framingham Heart Study, has been named a visiting professor at the Charite Hospital and the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH). The position is funded through Stiftung Charité, an independent charitable foundation.

As part of this two-year commitment, Dr. Ramachandran will serve as a consultant/advisor for a cardiovascular research project The Berlin Long-term Observation of Vascular Events (BeLOVE) cohort. The goal of this project is to characterize the epidemiology of chronic heart, brain and kidney disease and learn how best to impact the clinical course of these diseases after an acute event. As a member of the scientific advisory board of the project, Dr. Ramachandran hopes to build upon and strengthen this overseas collaboration.

For more than 25 years, Dr. Ramachandran has focused his research on the genetic and non-genetic epidemiology of heart failure; population-based vascular testing and cardiac ultrasound imaging; genetic and non-genetic epidemiology of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors and novel biomarkers including genomic, metabolomic and proteomic measures as well as CVD risk estimation in the short, medium- and long-term, including molecular markers and subclinical disease.

Dr. Ramachandran is the principal investigator of the RURAL (Risk Underlying Rural Areas Longitudinal) cohort study and a professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. He is the Jay & Louis Coffman professor of vascular medicine and chief of the section of preventive medicine and epidemiology.

He has received the Outstanding Mentor awards from the department of medicine, BUSM and the American Heart Association (AHA) Council on Epidemiology and Prevention as well as the prestigious AHA Population Science Award in 2014.

BIH Visiting Professors are leading scientists in their specific field within the life and medical sciences in the public or private sector who travel to Berlin for temporary activities at BIH and its partners, Charité Hospital and the Max Delbrueck Center for Molecular Medicine.

Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe. It proudly lays claim to more than half of all German Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, including Emil von Behring, Robert Koch, and Paul Ehrlich. Charité is internationally renowned for its excellence in teaching and training.

Stiftung Charité was endowed in 2005 by entrepreneur Johanna Quandt, who entrusted it with the mission of supporting the innovative potential and excellence of Berlin’s university medicine, which can look back on a rich tradition in medical research and patient care. Stiftung Charité supports BIH Visiting Professors with funds from its Private Excellence Initiative Johanna Quandt.