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An adopted Texan for more than 20 years, I was recruited to the UK in September 2007 as the incoming Head of Cardiovascular Science for the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London, and was appointed Head of NHLI effective from 1 January 2009.
After Central, I was educated at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Duke, followed by research training at the NIH under Nobel Laureate Marshall Nirenberg.
In 1984, I was appointed to the nascent program in cardiac molecular biology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, ultimately becoming Professor of Medicine, Molecular & Cellular Biology, and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics, Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Development, and inaugural recipient of the M. D. Anderson Foundation Chair.
I am presently the British Heart Foundation Simon Marks Chair in Regenerative Cardiology and Director of Imperial's BHF Centre for Research Excellence. I am the recipient of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the 2007 Distinguished Achievement Award of the American Heart Association Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences, an Advanced Investigator Grant from the European Research Council, and the 2008 Medical Futures Cardiovascular Innovation Award. I was elected here to the Academy of Medical Sciences (UK equivalent to the US Institute of Medicine) and serve as a member of the MRC Council.
It's a challenge but invigorating, relocating in one's mid-50's to another country, culture and language. (English English IS different, not just in the loo, flat and boot....) And, London is endlessly interesting.
We lived for several years right on the Thames, near the Globe Theatre, and love the sound of seagulls, in lieu of pigeons, and the constant sight of boats passing by. For those of you who saw Harry Potter 6, the Death Eaters flew off right by our window, at the end of the opening scene! How could we have missed that?! Must have happened before we arrived....
Now residing in leafier, less touristy Holland Park, close by Imperial's Hammersmith campus. Work remains focused on the elusive problem of cardiac regeneration after heart attacks, but has turned just from stem cells for heart repair to developing novel drugs that shrink the amount of heart damage. Play remains the London specialties of theatre (most recently, a revival of Sweeney Todd with Emma Thompson and Bryn Terfel), art, and occasional lectures (last night, Michael Lewis on his book Flash Boys... how the stock market was rigged by high-frequency traders).
