Nancy K. Sweitzer, MD, PhD, professor of medicine, is board-certified in cardiovascular medicine and advanced heart failure and transplant cardiology. Dr. Sweitzer received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and her MD/PhD from the University of Wisconsin. Her PhD in Physiology involved study of the contractile biophysics of single cardiac myocytes in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Moss. She pursued post-graduate internal medicine and cardiology training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Her initial faculty appointment was at Harvard, after which she returned to the University of Wisconsin. At Wisconsin she held numerous leadership roles, including Director of Clinical Research, Director of Quality and Director of the Fellowship Program. In 2014 she was named Chief of Cardiology and Director of the Sarver Heart Center at the University of Arizona in Tucson, where she was also the co-director of the graduate program in Clinical Translational Science. She is a fellow of the AHA, the ACC and the HFSA.
Internationally recognized for leadership in research and clinical trials, Dr. Sweitzer’s early research program focused on the physiology and mechanisms of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. She has led and collaborated on studies sponsored by the NIH, industry and academic sponsors. Dr. Sweitzer currently serves as chair of the Clinical Trials Study Section of the NHLBI. She is editor-in-chief of the American Heart Association Journal Circulation: Heart Failure. She is past-president of the Association of Professors of Cardiology and on the Board of Directors for the Heart Failure Society of America. Her key Interests are advanced heart failure, cardiogenic shock, mechanical circulatory support and transplant cardiology. Her research areas are cardiovascular clinical trials with an emphasis on drug and device treatment of cardiovascular diseases and early phase trials of promising therapeutics, physiology of heart failure, mechanisms of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction.