Barbara Casadei

Barbara Casadei is a British Heart Foundation Professor and an Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. She is also the President of the European Society of Cardiology. 

After graduating in Medicine at the University of Pavia in Italy, Barbara went on to a tenure-track training post in the University Department of Medicine in Varese, Italy at which point she moved to Oxford to further her clinical and research training. She was awarded the Joan and Richard Doll Fellowship at Green College, Oxford in 1991, a DPhil (PhD) in Cardiovascular Medicine (Pembroke College) in 1995, and a BHF Senior Research Fellowship in 2001. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians since 2001 and a Professor in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford since 2006. She was awarded a BHF Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine in 2012, which she still holds, and was elected to the Fellowship of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2013. As an outstanding leader in the field of cardiovascular medicine, she has been invited to give many keynote lectures and received several awards, including most recently the William Harvey Lecture on Basic Science and Silver Medal of the ESC in 2013.  

Barbara a passionate supporter of the career of women in science, both locally and within the ESC, placing a lot of effort on establishing initiatives aimed at supporting the career of young clinicians and scientists across Europe.  

Research Summary: My research focus is in understanding the cellular triggers and substrates of common cardiovascular diseases, such as heart failure and atrial fibrillation. 

My research programme links cell-based studies in human heart tissue to animal models of human diseases and patient-based investigations. This has proved to be an efficient way of testing hypotheses and identifying new disease causes which we can then target therapeutically in clinical trials. 

To complement these investigations, I am also intending to take advantage of local and national (UK Biobank) resources to address other pressing issues related to the identification, risk stratification, and management of people with asymptomatic AF in the general population.