We are pleased to announce that the UCLA Distinguished Cardiovascular Seminar Series (which occurs Monday’s at 11) will be organized by Drs. Michela Ottolia and Gentian Lluri.
Special thanks to Dr. Arjun Deb for his work to lead this lecture series for the past few years.
Please join us in thanking Drs. Ottolia and Lluri for taking on this important responsibility and contact them directly with any suggestions for invited speakers in 2018 and beyond.
Michela Ottolia, PhD
Michela Ottolia, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine. She completed her graduate studies in Biology at the University of Genoa, Italy, and trained as postdoctoral fellow at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and later at UCLA in the field of Physiology and Biophysics of ion channels and transporters.
Dr. Ottolia was Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Science at the Heart Institute of Cedars Sinai Medical Institute until 2017, when she was recruited to establish her laboratory in the Division of Molecular Medicine here at UCLA.
Dr. Ottolia’s current research interests lie in the areas of cellular electrophysiology, cardiac physiology and calcium homeostasis, focusing on molecular physiology of channels and transporters and their role in cell excitability in healthy and diseased hearts. Dr. Ottolia has authored numerous high impact publications and book chapters in the aforementioned topics and received grants from various funding agencies, including the National Institute of Health and the American Heart Association, where she also serves as a member of the grant review committee.
Gentian Lluri, MD, PhD
Gentian Lluri, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Member of the Ahmanson/UCLA Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Vermont, College of Medicine where he focused on developmental biology for his graduate studies, followed by internal medicine residency at University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2011, he joined the STAR (Specialized Training Advanced Research) program at UCLA and completed his adult cardiology fellowship training and his post-doc with a focus in cardiac development. Next, he completed a two-year fellowship in adult congenital heart disease at UCLA and began his career as a physician scientist.
Dr. Lluri has a longstanding interest in molecular biological pathways that guide cardiac development and the disturbances of these pathways that can lead to cardiac malformations as well as calcification and fibrosis which affects the vast majority of patients with congenital heart disease.
