Academic Founders

Professor Derek Yellon

Derek M Yellon PhD, DSc, FRCP (Hon), FACC, FESC, FAHA, is Professor of Molecular & Cellular Cardiology at University College London (UCL) and Director of the Hatter Cardiovascular Institute & Head of the Centre for Cardiology at UCL Hospitals & Medical School. He is also Head of the Research Department for Cardiovascular Medicine at UCL

In 1993 he was appointed Professor of Molecular & Cellular Cardiology at University College London. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians; the American College of Cardiology; the European Society of Cardiology; the International Society for Heart Research and the American Heart Association.

In 1994 he was awarded a DSc for his substantial contribution to the knowledge of cardiovascular disease and treatment. He is Vice President of the British Cardiovascular Society and is past Chairman of the Cellular Biology Working Group of the European Society of Cardiology as well as past member of the World Council of the International Society for Heart Research and the Council of the British Cardiovascular Society.

Professor Yellon was instrumental in establishing a second Hatter Cardiovascular Institute at the Medical School of the University of Cape Town to which he is also a Director and Chairman of the Institute Board. In recognition of these achievements he was in 1997, awarded an Hon Chair in the Department of Medicine at the University of Cape Town.

He is on the editorial board of a number of major Cardiovascular Journals and has published in excess of 350 full papers and edited 17 books. His main interest include, myocardial protection, the pathophysiology of cardioprotection in setting of diabetes, ischaemia/reperfusion injury, molecular aspects of adaptation to ischaemic injury and myocardial pre and postconditioning in both the basic and clinical arena.

 

Professor Lionel Opie

Lionel H. Opie, MD, DPhil, DSc, FRCP is a Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Hatter Institute for Cardiovascular Research at the University of Cape Town. After graduating from the University of Cape Town, he studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar and was a Research Fellow at Harvard from 1959-1961. He was Visiting Professor (1984-1998), Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford University Medical Centre, Stanford University, California. With Richard Bing, he established the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Cardiology.

He became a Life Fellow of the University of Cape Town in 1976. From 1976-1978, he was President of the International Society for Heart Research. In 1997 he was Visiting Research Fellow, Merton College, Oxford and the Department of Physiology, University of Oxford, England. During this period he completed his single author book, Heart Physiology, from Cell to Circulation, now in its 4th Edition, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2004. His major book, Drugs for the Heart, Elsevier, was first published as six articles in The Lancet and is now in its 7th edition. He is a recipient of the highest Presidential award in South Africa, The Order of Mapungubwe, for national and international contributions to cardiology.