We are very pleased to announce that our Institute’s Director, Professor Steven A Shea, PhD, has just received a 7-year $6.5 million “Outstanding Investigator Award” from the National Heart, Lung and Blood institute at the NIH. The purpose of the Outstanding Investigator Award is to provide long-term research support and flexibility to experienced researchers by funding an overall research program, which replaces the need to continually compete for new NIH single research project grants.
Professor Shea’s research program is directed at understanding why adverse cardiovascular events, including heart attacks, stroke and sudden cardiac death, all strike most frequently in the morning compared to other times of day or night. His research program will examine underlying cardiovascular mechanisms related to the internal body clock (circadian system), behaviors (e.g., work, stress and exercise), and a person’s own risk for adverse cardiovascular events (e.g., due to degree of underlying cardiovascular disease). This research will lay the groundwork for interventions to prevent adverse cardiovascular events such as optimizing timing of behaviors or medicines for cardiovascular diseases.
The research program will utilize intensive physiological monitoring of humans in a specialized laboratory, within the Oregon Clinical & Translational Research Institute at OHSU. The research will involve a stellar investigative team with expertise in circadian physiology, sleep physiology, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cardiac autonomic signaling, cardiac imaging and vascular physiology. Collaborators include Nicole Bowles, PhD and Saurabh Thosar , PhD from our Institute, David Ellison, MD, Maros Ferencik, MD, PhD, Beth Habecker, PhD, Jonathan Lindner, MD, Jeanne Link, PhD, Andrew McHill, PhD, and Jose Rueda, MD from across OHSU, plus Jonathan Elliott, PhD and Jonathan Emens, MD from the VA Portland Health Care System.
Congratulations to Professor Shea and his research collaborators!
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