51³Ô¹ÏÍø

The 51³Ô¹ÏÍø BHF Centre of Research Excellence held its Annual Symposium on 1^st July 2026. The programme featured exciting research talks and updates on Centre activities. We were honoured to host Professor Stefanie Dimmeler for the 2026 Feldberg Prize Lecture on vascular ageing. We also heard about three new BHF Doctoral Training Programmes co-led by 51³Ô¹ÏÍø researchers. presented the donor human hearts programme as a research platform, while and Dr Stephanie Hopley (Apollo Therapeutics) discussed the pathway for developing a pulmonary‑hypertension therapy from discovery to clinical trials. gave an overview of the Science in Medicine School Teams Prize for UK Sixth Form students, launched in 2021 and co-funded by the Centre. Representatives from the BHF Research leadership and communications teams joined us on the day.

Our early career researchers (ECRs) delivered excellent talks across basic and translational cardiovascular research supported by the Centre. Congratulations to the winners of the ECR Best Talk and Best Poster awards:

The Best ECR Oral Presentation

1st place – Mrs. Sacha Moore

2 runners-up – and Dr. Mohsen Mazidi

The Best Poster

1st place –

3 runners-up – Dr. Adela Constantinescu-Bercu, Dr. Sejal Singal, and

On 2^nd and 3^rd July, the Centre’s ECR Committee ran its first Summer School featuring ECR-tailored career development sessions and technical workshops.

Joint Symposium 2025 - 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, Oxford & Cambridge

The symposium included some excellent talks with speakers from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, Oxford and Cambridge. It turned out to be an excellent day with plenty of opportunity for collaborative talks and networking!

Many Early Career Researchers submitted posters for the Poster Session and many Congratulations to the winners who were:

First Prize – Sam Barnett

Second Prize – Charis Pericleous

Third Prize – Sean Zheng

This festive period, Three Wise Women from the Faculty of Medicine give us the gift of wisdom

Dr D’Souza is a basic cardiac electrophysiologist and a BHF Intermediate Research Fellow. She was recently recruited to 51³Ô¹ÏÍø as a Reader in Cardiac Electrophysiology. Primary impetus for her move to 51³Ô¹ÏÍø was the unique opportunity to perform electrophysiological measurements in human heart tissues from explanted donor and failing hearts available via a human tissue programme operant within the NHLI, coupled with the opportunity to work in collaboration with world-leading researchers and clinician-scientists within a BHF Centre of Excellence. Supported by the BHF and a Fondation Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence award, Dr D'Souza's laboratory focuses on the electrical wiring system of the heart, towards the development of new therapies for conduction system disease.

Turning today's heart disease into tomorrow's heart health

Professor James Ware and his team are connecting researchers and people with heart conditions to accelerate research and improve future care.

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, Chair of Pulmonary Vascular Diseases at the National Heart and Lung Institute, has recently been awarded a £2.5 million BHF Programme Grant for the project "Capture of Real-world data from smartphones and wearables linked to healthcare records to support early diagnosis and future management of pulmonary arterial hypertension (MHC-PAH)". 

, an Academic Clinical Lecturer at the National Heart and Lung Institute, was recently awarded the seven-year BHF Clinical Future Leadership Fellowship. The £1.7 million award will fund the development of an AI‑based platform to predict, on a case‑by‑case basis, which treatments will most benefit patients with heart rhythm disorders. Learn more on Dr Sau's work here. 

is a British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence Fellow at the National Heart and Lung Institute at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø. Dr Swiatlowska specialises in cardiovascular mechanobiology that uses cross-disciplinary approaches to understand how physical forces and mechanical properties of the environment shape cellular responses. Her research, contribution to the scientific community, and involvement in various public engagement activities were recognised by the British Society for Cell Biology, which awarded her the 2025

, a Clinical Associate Professor of Cardiology at the National Heart and Lung Institute at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, has received a 2024 Heart Research UK Translational Research Project Grant for “Development and Validation of Automated Capture Confirmation Tools for Conduction System Pacing”.