Co-Chair - Shanna Hamilton, PhD

Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ

Dr. Shanna Hamilton is an Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Arizona. Her laboratory aims to decipher molecular mechanisms of calcium regulation in the healthy and diseased heart, with the end goal of uncovering novel therapeutic strategies to treat arrhythmias and heart disease. Dr. Hamilton's team integrates a combination of confocal microscopy, electrophysiology, ex vivo optical mapping and gene editing approaches to study these mechanisms in multiple rodent models of cardiac diseases, from molecule to organism. Current research interests include regulation of cardiac calcium handling by endoplasmic reticulum stress and mitochondrial signaling pathways. 

Email: shannahamilton@arizona.edu

Co-Chair - Fran Alvarado, PhD

Assistant Professor 
Department of Medicine
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI

Dr. Alvarado's research aims to understand the mechanisms of heart disease and to develop safe and effective treatments that improve the life of patients. His lab's primary focus is the regulation of cardiac ion channels, with an emphasis on diseases arising from their dysfunction, especially calcium-dependent arrhythmias and structural cardiomyopathies. Calcium is required for heart function through a process called excitation-contraction coupling; yet, dysregulation of calcium homeostasis is known to participate in heart disease. Dr. Alvarado's team applies state-of-the art imaging, electrophysiology and cell biology tools to understand how mutations affecting proteins involved in excitation-contraction coupling, such as ryanodine receptor 2, the major intracellular calcium channel in the heart, participate in the development of disease.

Website:  calciumspark.com

Email:  falvarad@medicine.wisc.edu

Dave Barefield, PhD

Assistant Professor

Department of Cell and Molecular Physiology

Loyola University Chicago

Maywood, IL

Dr. Dave Barefield is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago. Dave received his PhD at Loyola University Chicago under the mentorship of Sakthivel Sadayappan, PhD, and did his postdoctoral training at Northwestern University in the lab of Elizabeth McNally, MD, PhD. His research interests have focused on myofilament function in genetic cardiomyopathies, and particularly the effect of environmental and genetic modifiers on the progression and severity of these disorders. The Barefield Lab opened at Loyola University Chicago in May 2020 and focuses on atrial myopathies and the roll of atrial dysfunction in common forms of cardiovascular disease.

Website: http://barefieldlab.org

Email: dbarefield@luc.edu

Matthew A. Caporizzo, PhD

Assistant Professor
Larner College of Medicine
University of Vermont
Burlington, VT

Dr. Caporizzo is interested in the mechanical feedback driving cardiac remodeling, with a focus on the factors that control myocardial viscoelasticity and their impact in regulating cardiac systolic and diastolic performance.  Harnessing a background in engineering, Dr. Caporizzo’s research integrates multiscale mechanical testing techniques with sub-diffraction microscopy to visualize the deformation of extracellular and cytoskeletal structures during mechanical loading.  His research aims to decipher the molecular regulators of cardiac mechanical changes and develop strategies to reverse pathological remodeling.

Website: https://www.caporizzolab.org/

Email: matthew.caporizzo@uvm.edu

Christopher Y. Ko, PhD

Project Scientist

Department of Pharmacology

UC Davis School of Medicine

Davis, CA

Dr. Christopher Ko is a Project Scientist working with Dr. Donald M. Bers at UC Davis. He investigates molecular and spatiotemporal mechanisms of CaMKII regulation and function in cardiac myocytes and how they underlie cardiac physiology and disease. Dr. Ko also has a keen interest in understanding mechanisms of Ca cycling and excitation-contraction coupling, particularly as they apply to RyR-mediated Ca leak and its consequences on heart failure and arrhythmias. Dr. Ko’s multidisciplinary studies implements a wide array of specialized techniques, which include live-cell Ca fluorescence and fluorescence lifetime/FRET-based molecular imaging, patch clamp electrophysiology, molecular biology, and mathematical modeling. Dr. Ko received his PhD studying the nonlinear dynamics of arrhythmia biology under the mentorship of Dr. James N. Weiss, MD and received his BS degree in Biomedical Engineering at The Johns Hopkins University.

Email: crsko@ucdavis.edu