Dr Teiji Akagi is Head, Professor of Adult Congenital Heart Disease Center, Okayama University Hospital, Okayama, Japan. He is the Vice President of Japanese Society of Adult Congenital Heart Disease.

He graduated Kurume University, Kurume, Japan in 1984. He had research fellowship in division of cardiology, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada from 1989 to 92. Since 2004, he works in Cardiac Intensive Care Center, Okayama University Hospital, Okayama, Japan.

His major is catheter intervention of congenital heart disease, adult congenital heart disease. He also has many important works about Kawasaki disease, pulmonary hypertension, cardiac imaging and hemodynamics.

Interest
Interventional Cardiology

Qualifications
MBBS, University of Queensland, Australia, December 1983
MRCP (UK), September 1988

Jae-young Choi is the Chief of the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Director of the Center for Congenital Heart Disease at Severance Cardiovascular Hospital, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

He received his graduate and post-graduate medical training, including M.D., M.S., and Ph.D., at Yonsei University.

He is a member of numerous medical societies, and on the editorial boards of the major national academic societies. Currently, he is the Chairman of Scientific Committee in the Korean Pediatric Heart Society and the Vice President of the Korean Society of Adult Congenital Heart Disease. He also serves as consultant to advisory committees of Korean government organizations. His major research interest is interventional treatment for congenital and structural heart diseases.

Consultant Pediatric Cardiologist
Glenmark Cardiac Centre
Nanavati Hospital, Mumbai
Breach Candy Hospital, Mumbai

Specialist in Cardiology
Vice-President (General Assembly)
Macau Cardiology Association

Board Certifications
American Board of Internal Medicine - Cardiovascular Disease
American Board of Internal Medicine - Interventional Cardiology

Education
Wayne State University, MI, 2003

Residencies & Internships
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Internal Medicine, CO, 2006

Fellowships
Scripps Green Hospital, Interventional Cardiology, CA, 2010
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Cardiovascular Disease, CO, 2009

Dr. Xavier Freixa is an Interventional Cardiologist at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, University of Barcelona. Dr. Freixa has been trained in interventional cardiology at the Toronto General Hospital, University Health Network and the Montreal Heart Institute, University of Montreal. He has a major interest in complex percutaneous coronary interventions, structural heart and adult congenital diseases. Among the main areas of interest highlight some advanced percutaneous techniques like PVL repair, left atrial appendage occlusion, ASD/VSD occlusion, TAVI and mitral valve repair with the Mitra-Clip system.

Prof. Hara is the Associate Professor at the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Toho University Ohashi Medical Center. He is specialize in doing PCI, EVT, and SHD intervention such as ASD/PFO/PVL closure, PTMC and BAV etc. Proctor for Occlutech PLD device, one of operators for Watchman Japan trial. He is also the Pesident of Structure Club Japan.

Dr. Hijazi is an interventional cardiologist who specializes in treating congenital & structural heart disease in both children and adults. He is a pioneer in the non-surgical repair of congenital and structural heart defects. His major area of interest is in the development of techniques and catheters/devices to help treat or cure congenital and structural cardiac disease without open-heart surgery.

Interventional Cardiologist at Montreal Heart Institute (Montreal, Canada) since 2002
Medical Director, Structural Heart Program since 2014
Associate Professor at University of Montreal since 2010
Accomplishment of many novelties including First-in-Man (FIM): Amplatzer Membranous Ventricular Septal Occluder II, Amplatzer Cardiac Plug (ACP) for left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO)
Proctor in structural interventions (transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO), complex congenital procedures)
Clinical research in structural interventions (patent foramen ovale, left atrial appendage occlusion, congenital procedures, transcatheter aortic valve replacement) and atherosclerosis (progression-regression)
Member of the Left Atrial Appendage Academic Research Consortium (LAAARC) and of the Paravalvar Leak Consortium (PVLARC)

Saibal Kar is an interventional cardiologist in the Cardiology Division of the Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he is also the Director of Interventional Cardiac Research.

Dr. Kar is a skilled interventional cardiologist with a special expertise in valvuloplasty and congenital heart disease. His research interests are focused on coronary restenosis, device development and the advancement of percutaneous techniques in the treatment of congenital and valvular heart diseases. Involved in both clinical and experimental research, Dr. Kar's clinical work has included publishing data on different aspects of angioplasty for the treatment of acute myocardial infarction. In the experimental lab, he has done original work on newer drugeluting stents for the prevention of restenosis of coronary stents, and he recently developed a new drug-eluting stent, which is being used in a clinical trial in Germany.

Dr. Kim is an associate professor of the department of pediatrics at Seoul National University Children's Hospital. He received the M.D. and Ph.D. at Seoul National University. His main interests are catheter intervention for diverse congenital heart diseases, cardiomyopathy and Kawasaki disease.

Specialty
Heart disease, General Pediatric Cardiology, Adult congenital heart disease, Cardiomyopathy, Congenital heart disease, Kawasaki, Acquired heart disease, Pulmonary hypertension

Jung-Sun Kim, MD, PhD is Associate Professor of Medicine at Yonsei University Medical School, Director of the Hybrid Cathroom at Severance Cardiovascular Hospital. Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Kim has completed his residency in medicine and fellowship in cardiology in Severance Hospital, Yonsei University and also successfully defended his doctorate thesis at the same university. His research interest has been intracoronary imaging, especially optical coherence tomography (OCT).

For 10 years, he has pioneered the application of OCT to assess the coronary stent. He has a variety of experience for peripheral and aorta stent graft as well as coronary intervention. He has started Structural Heart Intervention including PMV, ASD, PFO and PDA since 2012 and expanded to LAA occlusion, paravalvular leakage and coronary fistula closure. He has been published over 40 SCI /SCIE papers as first or corresponding authors.

Dr Nguyen Lan Hieu is an adult and pediatric Cardiologist. He was granted Associate Professor in 2013. He is the Director of the Center of Cardiovascular Medicine, Hanoi Medical University Hospital; Vice Head of the Department of Cardiology, Hanoi Medical University. He has been in interventional practice for more than 20 years. He is a specialist in intervention of congenital and structural heart diseases. He is the Vietnamese interventionist with the highest number of congenital heart disease cases been intervened by himself throughout Vietnam. His skillful hands are not only wellknown in his country but internationally. He has helped trained a large numbers of interventionists in his country and many countries throughout the world.

Apart from doing intervention, he also had a lot of charity activities in screening children with congential heart diseases in various provinces in Vietnam, giving consultations and treating those children.

Chief Physician
Cardiovascular Medicine/Interventional Cardiology
Division of Cardiology
Sendai Kousei Hospital, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan

Clinical Professor
Department of Clinical Medicine
Aarhus University Hospital

Consultant, Pediatric Heart Center, Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health (QSNICH), Bangkok, THAILAND
Board Committee, Society of Pediatric Cardiology of Thailand (SPCT)
Board Committee, Thai Resuscitation Council (TRC)
He has been working as a consultant of Pediatric Cardiology at QSNICH since 2006 mainly focusing on CHD and SHD Catheter Intervention. His clinical research interests are transcatheter therapy in various congenital heart lesions including the new system for percuteneous pulmonary valve implantation (PPVI) and long-term outcome of ASD device closure.

Prof. Horst Sievert is the Director of the CardioVascular Center Frankfurt, and the Department of Internal Medicine, Cardiology and Vascular Medicine of the Sankt Katharinen Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. He is also a Professor of Internal Medicine/Cardiology at the University of Frankfurt and Honorary Professor at Southend University, UK.

Prof. Sievert received his medical degree at the University Frankfurt, Germany. After training in internal medicine, nephrology, intensive care medicine and radiology, he completed a fellowship in cardiology and vascular medicine. He became director of the Department of Interventional Cardiology and Angiology of the Heart Center Rotenburg in 1990 and senior consultant at the Bethanien Hospital in Frankfurt in 1993. From 2007 to 2009 he was the Director of the Catheterization Lab for Peripheral Vascular Laboratory/Structural Heart Defects at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, USA. Since 2003 he is the director of the CardioVascular Center Frankfurt. In addition, he is currently senior consultant at two other hospitals in the Frankfurt area.

He's been the principal investigator of many clinical trials and has authored more than 300 manuscripts and 700 abstracts in peer reviewed journals, 100 books and book contributions. He has also delivered more than 1800 invited lectures around the world and has organized more than 300 workshops, congresses and conferences. He is member of the Editorial Council, Editorial Board or Editor of several medical journals.

Prof. Sievert has personally performed more than 60,000 interventional procedures. A major focus of his activity in the cath lab is highly specialized non-coronary interventions for patients with structural, valvular and congenital heart disease, carotid disease, among other conditions. Prof. Sievert was the first to close the left atrial appendage percutaneously and one of the first to perform many other procedures including PFO closure, valvuloplasty, PDA closure, TAVI, trnascatheter mitral and tricuspid valve repair, coarctation angioplasty, paravalvular leak closure, LV aneurysm repair, aortic aneurysm endografting, renal denervation, acute stroke interventions and many others. He has one of the largest experiences worldwide in catheter closure of heart defects in adults and gets referrals from all over the world. He received many awards including the Bleifeld Memorial Award, the PICS & AICS Lifetime Achievement Award and the TCT Master Operator Award.

Trained in cardiology with special interest in congenital and structural heart diseases. His research interests are focused on adults with congenital heart diseases and catheter-based heart valve interventions. Has performed >1,000 TAVI procedures. PI for the NOTION I and NOTION II trial investigating TAVI vs. SAVR in younger, lower risk patients. Lead the first-in-human transcatheter mitral valve implantation in 2012.

Shih-Hsien Sung, MD, PhD is an Attending Physician at the Division of Cardiology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital. Dr. Sung obtained his MD and PhD degrees from National Yang Ming University where he is currently an Assistant Professor. He was Internal Medicine Chief Resident and went on to obtain Cardiology Fellowship at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. He was a Research Fellow at Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan and at Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. Dr. Sung's clinical and research interests are on heart failure, including left and right side heart failure. He is an interventional cardiologist and is also an echocardiographer.

Dr. Tam is the attending physician of Cardiology in Kiang Wu Hospital and the Director-General of Macau Association of Cardiovascular Interventions.

Assistant Professor Edgar Tay is a practicing cardiologist at the National University Heart Centre, Singapore, and an assistant professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore.

He now co-leads the TAVI and mitraclip mitral valve repair programme.

Presently, he is actively involved in the management of patients with adult congenital heart disease, pulmonary hypertension and those with heart disease in pregnancy. He also sees patients with valvular heart disease who may benefit from transcatheter therapies.

Dr Apostolos Tzikas is an interventional cardiologist specialized in structural and congenital heart disease. He works at AHEPA University Hospital of Thessaloniki, Greece. He has a PhD from the Thoraxcenter, Rotterdam (supervised by Patrick W. Serruys) entitled "The role of advanced imaging in TAVI". He is an experienced clinical proctor for St Jude Medical in TAVI and LAA closure and he is responsible for the Amplatzer Cardiac Plug Registry, which has collected data on >1000 patient treated with in 22 centers worldwide.

Chief of Pediatric Cardiology section
National Taiwan University Hospital
President of Taiwan Society of Pediatric Cardiology
CEO Taiwan Cardiac Children’s Foundation

Chief Physician
Guangdong General Hospital
Professor
Department of Pediatric Cardiology
Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute

Specialty: Pediatric Cardiology, Interventional Cardiac Catheterization

Prof. Yin is the Chief of the Division of Cardiology at the Cheng-Hsin General Hospital in Taipei and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at the National Yang-Ming University, School of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan. He is also the current Secretary General of the Taiwan Society of Cardiology, Councilor of the Asian Pacific Society of Cardiology, and the former President of the Taiwan Society of Lipids and Atherosclerosis.

His interests include interventional cardiology, management of patients with high risk for cardiovascular disease, and heart failures research. Prof. Yin has participated in many international clinical trials such as HOKUSAI-VTE (national PI), ROCKET-AF, ASEND-HF, etc.,

Gerald Yong is an interventional cardiologist at Fiona Stanley Hospital and Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia. He trained at Royal Perth Hospital, Northwestern University Chicago and Montreal Heart Institute concentrating on coronary and structural interventions. He set up the service to deliver transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVI) in Western Australia. He is the head of the Western Australian High Risk Aortic Stenosis Service / TAVI program, and the Director of Structural Intervention at Fiona Stanley Hospital. He has proctored TAVI nationally and internationally, and has been an invited speaker on this area in multiple international conferences.