Eduardo Marbán, MD, PhD
Director, Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute
Eduardo Marbán's professional career is dedicated to understanding disorders of cardiac rhythm and pump function, and to developing novel treatments based upon fundamental insights into mechanism. A native of Havana, Cuba, Dr. Marbán came to the United States with his parents at the age of six as a political refugee. He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Wilkes College in Pennsylvania, and then attended the Yale University School of Medicine in a combined MD/PhD program.
Dr. Marbán was an intern and medical resident on the Osler service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and then completed his cardiology fellowship there. Appointed to the Johns Hopkins University faculty as Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine in 1985, Dr. Marbán reached the rank of Professor in 1991. Dr. Marbán was honored as the first faculty member, in 1998, to occupy the Michel Mirowski, MD, Professorship in Cardiology. This endowed chair honors Dr. Mirowski, the inventor of the automatic implantable defibrillator. In 2003, Dr. Marbán became the Chief of Cardiology at Johns Hopkins; he also founded and directed the Donald W. Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center at Johns Hopkins, a $36 million, seven-year program focused on identifying novel risk factors for sudden cardiac death.
In August 2007, Dr. Marbán became the inaugural Director of the Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. This novel program includes cardiologists, cardiac surgeons, imaging specialists and researchers, brought together under a common rubric to foster discovery and to enhance patient care. At Cedars-Sinai, Marbán directs a National Institutes of Health-sponsored translational research program in stem cells, the Specialized Center for Cell-based Therapy.
Dr. Marbán has received the Basic Research Prize of the American Heart Association (AHA), the Research Achievement Award of the International Society for Heart Research, and the Distinguished Service Award of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the AHA. He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Circulation Research, the world's leading journal of cardiovascular investigation.
In the course of his research, Dr. Marbán has made several discoveries that have translated into patents in the fields of cardiac arrhythmias, stem cells and drug treatments for heart disease and stroke. Dr. Marbán¿s inventions have formed the basis for three startup companies.
