Pediatrics and Neonatology

Samer Ellahham has served as Chief Quality Officer at Shaikh Khalifa Medical City since 2009. In his role, he has led the development of a quality and safety program that has been highly successful and visible and has been recognized internationally by a number of awards. As Chief Quality Officer and Global Leader, he has focus on ensuring that that implementation of this best practices leads to breakthrough improvements in clinical quality and patient safety. He is the recipient of the Quality Leadership Award from the Global Awards for Excellence in Quality and Leadership and the Business Leadership Excellence Award from the World Leadership Congress. He was nominated in 2015 for SafeCare magazine Person of the Year. He is Certified Professional in Healthcare Quality (CPHQ). He is a recognized leader in quality, safety, and the use of robust performance improvement in improving healthcare delivery.

Pediatric Cardiology

William J. Rowe M.D. FBIS (Fellow British Interplanetary Society), FACN (Fellow American College of Nutrition, Retired Fellow Royal Society of Medicine), is a board certified specialist in Internal Medicine. He received his M.D. at the University of Cincinnati and was in private practice in Toledo, Ohio for 34 years. During that time he supervised over 5000 symptom - limited maximum hospital-based treadmill stress tests. He studied 3 world class extraordinary endurance athletes and published their exercise-related magnesium deficiencies. This triggered a 20 year pursuit of the cardiovascular complications of Space flight.

Pediatric Cardiology

Dr. Dhalla has published more than 620 full length papers in refereed journals and 180 papers in books and monographs. His research work has been cited more than 23,000 times and he edited 55 books on various aspects of the cardiovascular system. He has been an invited speaker at more than 355 national and international conferences and 145 institutions. Dr. Dhalla has trained more than 163 graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and visiting scientists. In his capacity as Secretary General and President of the International Society for Heart Research, he was engaged in promoting the scientific basis of cardiovascular medicine for 25 years. He has been Editor-in-Chief of a major international journal “Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry” for the past 30 years and is also serving as Executive Director of the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences since 1996. He has received 190 honours and awards from all over the world including MD/DSc Honorary Degrees from 6 Institutions and Honorary Professorship from 4 Universities. Dhalla is Honorary Life President of the IACS and is serving as Distinguished Professor, University of Manitoba and Director of Cardiovascular Developments at the St. Boniface Hospital Albrechtsen Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Pediatrics

Dr. Ovidio A. Garcia-Villarreal is a cardiac surgeon dedicated to the private practice, retired from the social medicine. He is the past president of the Mexican society of cardiac surgery, and the Current President of the Mexican college of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery. He has been working on the mitral, aortic and tricuspid reconstruction for more than 25 years. He has been pioneer in the field of cardiac arrhythmia surgery, especially in atrial fibrillation surgery (Cox-maze procedure) as well as in aortic valve sparing operations in Mexico. He has implemented national surgical models for valvular heart reconstruction and maze procedure. He has been also dedicated to clinical research, with more than 50 international publications in PubMed. Editor-in -chief of the journal Cirugia Cardiaca en Mexico, and reviewer in more than 15 international journals. He is active member of the Mexican Society of cardiac Surgery, Society of Thoracic Surgeons, European Association of Cardiothoracic Surgery, amongst others.

Pediatric Cardiology

Pieter A. Doevendans became a cardiologist in Maastricht (trained by H. Wellens) after his medical training at the Leiden University. In 1993-1994 he had the opportunity to work with Ken Chien at the University of California San Diego, where the work on embryonic stem cells started. The work was completed in Maastricht and provided the basis for a thesis on the function of the promoter of the atrial Myosin Light Chain gene. Upon return in The Netherlands he worked with Christine Mummery and Hans Clevers on both human Embryonic as well as human Cardiac stem cells. In the meantime he remained active as an interventional cardiologist initially in Maastricht, but from 2002 on in Utrecht at the UMC Utrecht. Here he was appointed full professor in Translational Cardiology in 2004 and head of the department in 2005. The focus of the department of cardiology is on Cardiac Failure, Stem Cells and Genetics. He was funded by various national and international foundations. Thus far (2017) he published more than 700 peer reviewed papers and 11 books.

Cardiology