Recognition Awards

Distinguished Allied Professional Award

Heather M. Ross, DNP, PhD, ANP, FHRS, CCDS

Dr. Heather Ross is a nurse practitioner and professor in the Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University where her research focuses on health equity and public policy. She fell into cardiac EP at the University of Pennsylvania in the vibrant EP section with allied professional leader Erica Zado and continued her clinical career at Lankenau Hospital with her mentor, Dr. Dusan Kocovic.

Dr. Ross maintains a clinical practice with the Cardiac Arrhythmia Group at HonorHealth, formerly Arizona Arrhythmia Consultants. Dr. Ross has been a member of HRS since 2003, and has served in numerous leadership roles on committees, task forces, working groups, and on the Board of Trustees. During her service to HRS, Dr. Ross had the opportunity to innovate within HRS with the launch of regional meetings for allied professionals in partnership with Dr. Aileen Ferrick, the expansion of patient-facing educational materials, and the development of prep resources to promote allied professional success on the IBHRE exams for pacing and EP professionals. She has presented original research and case reports at scientific sessions and in HRS journals and is a frequent speaker at HRS’ annual Heart Rhythm and other HRS-sponsored meetings.

Over the decades, Dr. Ross has enjoyed learning from many HRS colleagues across the scope of HRS’s global membership. That mentorship from HRS colleagues prepared Dr. Ross for what HRS leader Julie Shea has referred to as career off-roading. Her PhD dissertation examined biomedical technology innovation policy and patterns influencing technology adoption across the heart rhythm team. She has served as the health policy advisor to Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego and chairs multiple civic groups including the Phoenix Women’s Commission and the Arizona Civil Rights Advisory Board. Her current scholarly work, in addition to EP clinical practice, entails research in older adult homelessness; policing and mental health crises; and digital information literacy in under-resourced regions around the world.

Distinguished Scientist Award – Basic

Xander H. T. Wehrens, MD, PhD, FHRS

Dr. Xander Wehrens is the Director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Baylor College of Medicine, where he holds the Quigley endowed chair in Cardiology, and is a Professor in the Departments of Integrative Physiology, Medicine, Pediatrics, Neuroscience, and the Center for Space Medicine. Dr. Wehrens is internationally recognized for pioneering translational research on cardiac arrhythmias and heart failure mechanisms. Dr. Wehrens obtained his MD and PhD degrees from Maastricht University in the Netherlands. He completed his PhD thesis on the mechanisms underlying long QT syndrome type-3 under the supervision of renowned cardiac electrophysiologist Dr. Hein Wellens.

Subsequently, Dr. Wehrens was a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in the lab of Dr. Andrew Marks at Columbia University, where he performed seminal work on the role of ryanodine receptor/ calcium release channels in heart disease. His work at Columbia and subsequently at Baylor has led to the development of several small molecule inhibitors of these ryanodine receptor channels that are currently in preclinical development or clinical trials for catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. Dr. Wehrens directs a translational research lab that aims to elucidate the mechanism underlying inherited and acquired arrhythmia and cardiomyopathy phenotypes using a wide range of assays utilizing human tissue samples, isolated cardiac cells, and transgenic mouse models. His lab has been continuously funded by multiple NIH grants for two decades and he has published over 300 papers, many in high-impact journals.

Dr. Wehrens has served as Associate Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at Baylor since 2009 and has mentored over 120 trainees in his lab, most of whom are still active in medical research. Over 20 former trainees are now tenure-track or tenured faculty in the US and around the world. Dr. Wehrens is also the co-director of a new T32 program for predoctoral students entitled ‘Cardiovascular Research and Drug Development’. Finally, Dr. Wehrens is an elected member of the American Society of Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and Association of American Physicians (AAP), and a fellow of the American Heart Association, European Society of Cardiology, International Society for Heart Research, and the Heart Rhythm Society.

Distinguished Scientist Award – Clinical

Sumeet S. Chugh, MD, FHRS (Clinical)

Dr. Sumeet Chugh serves as Associate Director of the Smidt Heart Institute and Director of the Heart Rhythm Center at Cedars-Sinai, Los Angeles, where he holds the Pauline and Harold Price Professorial Chair in Cardiac Electrophysiology. His unbroken track record of peer-reviewed academic funding from NIH and other agencies has led to authorship of >275 papers that have garnered >100,000 citations.

Chugh’s signature scientific contribution has been his development of new insights into the prediction and prevention of sudden cardiac death (SCD). Working from scratch, Dr. Chugh set up large community-based learning systems that connected first responder data, the electronic health record and a purpose-built biobank. This made it possible to study and adjudicate sudden deaths one at a time in populations of 1M+, leveraging the full richness of the medical record, transcending traditional death certificate data. Dr. Chugh’s studies yielded clinical, genomic and proteomic information from large populations in real-time, enabling him and his mentees/collaborators to develop a novel clinical risk score for SCD that is stimulating new clinical trials for SCD prevention. Other seminal contributions include the recognition of warning symptoms in the hours and days preceding imminent SCD to usher in the concept of “near-term prevention”, with implementation being facilitated by cutting-edge artificial intelligence tools.

Dr. Chugh’s recent work on augmenting risk stratification for under-represented population subgroups, including the young, women and Hispanics, has also made an impact on the field. In recognition of his scholarly contributions, Dr. Chugh is an elected member of the two honorary societies in internal medicine: the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He has received the 2024 Distinguished Scientist Award (Clinical Domain) from the American College of Cardiology. Dr Chugh is past president of the Association of University Cardiologists and the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society.

Distinguished Service Award

Ulrika Maria Birgersdotter-Green, MD, FHRS

Dr. Ulrika Birgersdotter-Green is a board-certified cardiologist who specializes in diagnosing and treating heart rhythm disorders. She directs the Pacemaker and ICD (Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillator) Service at UC San Diego Health and leads one of the largest lead extraction programs in the Western United States.

She is actively involved in large clinical trials evaluating biventricular pacing therapy for heart failure management, new cardiac device technology and publishes regularly in prominent electrophysiology journals. She has served as a National PI on device trials and she has also co-authored several major consensus documents involving cardiac device guidelines.

Dr. Birgersdotter-Green serves on several boards including Associate Editor of The Heart Rhythm O2 Journal as well as the Editorial Board of Circulation A&E. Dr. Birgersdotter-Green was the inaugural chair for the Heart Rhythm Society’s Growth and Leadership Opportunities for Women in EP program, she has served on the Women As One program committee and leads a yearly national program for women electrophysiologists.

Distinguished Teacher Award

Jonathan M. Kalman, MBBS, PhD, FHRS

Professor Jonathan Kalman is a clinician-scientist who received his MBBS in 1983 and PhD in 1994 both from the University of Melbourne. He leads both clinical and research groups at the Heart Rhythm Department at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and University of Melbourne.

Professor Kalman has over 550 peer-reviewed publications with over 46,000 citations with an H-index of 100. He has authored over 40 book chapters. He has given over 400 invited lectures at National and International meetings including multiple keynote/named lectures. At HRS 2020 he delivered the Ralph Lazzarra lecture. He has participated in countless EP Fellows in Training courses and has regularly been invited faculty at The Eric Prystowsky HRS international EP Fellows seminar (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2024).

Prof Kalman has served on numerous Heart Rhythm Society Committees including the Scientific Program Committee (2012-2016), the Board of Trustees (2017-2022), and currently serves on the Global Relations Committee and the Nominations Subcommittee. Among numerous other society roles he has served as President (2018) and Scientific Chair (2012-2016) of The Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society; and as both Scientific Chair of the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand (2012-2018) and as Chair of the Heart Rhythm Council (2022-ongoing) of the Society.

Prof. Kalman has won numerous research and mentorship prizes including The Paul Wood Medal of The British Cardiovascular Society 2015 and the Simon Dack Award (2014) of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology for “outstanding scholarship” and service to the journal. He has been awarded The 2024 Brownless Medal of The University of Melbourne for ensuring the place of the Melbourne Medical School as a world leader in medical teaching and training and health research.

Prof. Kalman has mentored and trained a generation of Australian and International electrophysiologists in clinical and academic EP; many have gone on to be national and international leaders. He has supervised 38 PhD candidates and 6 ongoing. He has supervised over 40 international post-doctoral fellows. The PhD candidates have won prestigious National and International prizes and fellowships on the basis of their work, including manyHeart Rhythm Society Awards. In addition, Prof Kalman has been awarded The William Parmley Prize, Journal of the American College of Cardiology for best manuscript from a junior investigator-Mentor recognition.

Professor Kalman leads a weekly complex electrogram EP teaching session attended by numerous Fellows in EP training and by practicing Electrophysiologists at all career stages. He is an associate editor of JACC-Clinical Electrophysiology and serves on the editorial board of multiple international scientific journals inc. Heart Rhythm, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology and The European Heart Journal.

Pioneer in Cardiac Pacing and Electrophysiology Award

William G. Stevenson, MD, FHRS

Dr. William Stevenson received his bachelor’s degree from the University of South Florida and his medical degree from Tulane University. After training in cardiology at UCLA Center for the Health Sciences he was a research fellow at the University of Limberg in the Netherlands under the direction of Hein Wellens. He joined the faculty of Medicine at UCLA in 1985 and moved to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 1993 where he became Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in 2005. In 2017 he joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he is currently Professor of Medicine.

In the late 1980s, Dr. Stevenson established a program for catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias at UCLA. In a series of clinical and computational modeling projects, he defined techniques to characterize reentry circuit sites based on the response to programmed electrical stimulation. These techniques have remained a cornerstone of arrhythmia evaluation and mapping for over 3 decades. Work to address intramural arrhythmia substrates as a particular problem led to the development of an irrigated needle electrode catheter for mapping and ablation. His program at Vanderbilt continues to explore novel methods to help patients with cardiac arrhythmias.

Through clinical and research fellowship programs he has mentored over 70 trainees from the US and abroad. He is the recipient of multiple lectureships and awards for teaching, clinical care, and investigation. He has been previously honored by the Heart Rhythm Society with the Distinguished Teacher Award (2018), the Prystowsky Lectureship (2016), and the Founders Lectureship (2023). He is past president of the Cardiac Electrophysiology Society (2009) and is the founding editor of Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology of the American Heart Association (2008-2017).

Past Award Recipients

View our roster of past award recipients

Questions?

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Heart Rhythm Society Statement of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

HRS stakeholders share a common passion for accomplishing our mission to end death and suffering from heart rhythm disorders.

We believe our diverse backgrounds, experiences and interests are assets in reaching that goal, and we are committed to providing an inclusive environment in all our activities, where everyone feels valued, respected, and welcome.

We strive to have organizational leaders who represent all aspects of our diversity and who promote the diversity, equity, and inclusion that are essential to our success.