General Management

Dr Valentín Fuster combines roles as General Director of the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares Carlos III (CNIC) in Madrid and Director of the Cardiovascular Institute and Physician-in-Chief at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York. He is also Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC), the main source of clinical news and analysis in cardiovascular medicine, published by the American College of Cardiology.

The innumerable positions Dr. Fuster has held during his career include President of the American Heart Association, President of the World Heart Federation, member of the Institute of Medicine of the US National Academy of Sciences (where he chairs the committee for the prevention of the global epidemic in heart disease), member of the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Advisory Council, and President of the American College of Cardiology Training Program.

After qualifying in medicine at the University of Barcelona, Valentín Fuster continued his studies in the USA. He was professor of Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases at the Mayo Medical School, Minnesota and at the Medical School of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, and from 1991 to 1994 was full professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 1994 he was named director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai, a post he has combined since 2012 with that of Physician-in-Chief.

Dr. Fuster has been named Doctor Honoris Causa by thirty-four universities and has received three of the most important awards from the US National Institutes of Health. He is an author on more than 1000 scientific articles in international medical journals, and has published two leading books on clinical cardiology and research: The Heart and Atherothrombosis and Coronary Artery Disease.

He is the most highly cited Spanish research scientist, according to the Cybermetrics Lab ranking, which is based on an analysis of Google Scholar. At the time of writing his work has been cited 238,436 times in the scientific literature. He also has a higher h index than any other Spanish researcher, indicating that he tops rankings for both the quantity and the quality of research. His h index is currently 187, indicating that he 187 of his publications have been cited at least 187 times in other publications.

His contributions to cardiovascular medicine have had an enormous impact on the treatment of patients with heart disease. His research into the origin of cardiovascular events, which has contributed to improved treatment of heart attack patients, was recognized in 1996 by the award of the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research.

In 2012, Dr. Fuster was named by the American College of Cardiology as one of the Living Legends in Cardiovascular Medicine, and was awarded the Research Achievement Award, the highest award given by the American Heart Association.

Dr. Fuster was also recently awarded the Ron Haddock International Impact Award by the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association in recognition of his global leadership. Further recognition in Spain came in the form of the Severo Ochoa Prize for Biomedical Research and the Mapfre Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his work on the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. According to the evaluation committee, Dr. Fuster’s career stands as a model of the kind of research and innovation in which Spain needs to excel in order to compete in the global economy.

Among his many achievements, Dr. Fuster is the only cardiologist to have received the highest research awards from the four leading international cardiology organizations: the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, theEuropean Society of Cardiology, and the Interamerican Society of Cardiology. In 2019, the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities awarded Dr Fuster the National Research Prize, and he was named “Physician of the Year” in the ABC Salud awards for his contribution to cardiovascular medicine and his recent research into the links between heart and brain health.

In addition to his dedication to research, Dr. Fuster is strongly committed to his responsibility to communicate to the public. In recent years, this commitment has produced six books aimed at a general audience, which have been very positively received. This vocation and the clear need to promote healthy lifestyle habits led Dr. Fuster to set up the Science, Health and Education Foundation (SHE), with the goal of improving public health, especially among young people.