Rate My Professor Barbara Casadei

Professor Barbara Casadei is Head of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) within the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London, where she holds the British Heart Foundation Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine. She earned her MD cum laude from the University of Pavia, Italy, in 1984, and a DPhil in Cardiovascular Medicine from the University of Oxford in 1995. Her academic career began with cardiology training at the University of Pavia, followed by clinical and research training at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust starting in 1989. At Oxford, she progressed to British Heart Foundation Senior Research Fellow in 2001, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine in 2006, and BHF Chair in 2012. She served as Honorary Consultant Cardiologist and led the Cardiovascular Theme of the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre. In 2024, she joined Imperial as Head of NHLI. Casadei was the first woman to serve as President of the European Society of Cardiology (2018–2020), during which she founded the European Cardiovascular Patient Forum, Women in the ESC, and EuroHeart, an international collaboration for advancing cardiovascular care through observational studies and clinical trials.

Her research specializations encompass myocardial biology, cellular electrophysiology, atrial fibrillation, diabetic cardiomyopathy, and nitric oxide/redox signalling in the heart. She directs translational bench-to-bedside programmes using human cardiac tissue from surgery patients, imaging studies, and clinical trials for risk stratification and therapies in atrial fibrillation and related conditions. Notable projects include principal investigator of the UK Biobank Cardiac Monitoring Study involving over 35,000 participants to assess silent arrhythmias' impact on imaging, cognition, and stroke risk, and the STEEER-AF cluster-randomized trial. Key publications include 'Mechanisms of atrial fibrillation' (Heart, 2019) and contributions to major journals on AF pathophysiology and management. Casadei has received prestigious honors including Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (2001), Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2013), ESC Gold Medal (2020), British Cardiovascular Society Mackenzie Medal (2020), William Harvey Lecture and Silver Medal (ESC, 2013), and Thomas Lewis Lecture and Silver Medal (BCS, 2014). She holds board positions with the Leducq Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Max Delbrück Centre, and is Editor-in-Chief of JAMA Cardiology from 2026.