Ken Chien

Dr. Kenneth Chien is an international leader in cardiovascular science and medicine, as well as a pioneer in developing new therapeutic strategies to prevent the onset and progression of heart failure. In 2012, Dr. Chien received a Presidential Call to a Professorship at Karolinska Institutet to start a new cardiovascular initiative with a major focus on regenerative cardiology, for which he recently received support from the Wallenberg Foundation. In January 2013, he joined Karolinska Institutet as a Professor, and his laboratory is located in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Campus Solna, and also works at the Department of Medicine, Campus Huddinge. Previously, Dr. Chien was the Scientific Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, where he also lead the University-wide Cardiovascular Stem Cell Program. While at Harvard, he was awarded the distinction of the first endowed chair of the Charles Addison & Elizabeth Ann Sanders Professor of Medicine. Prior to his MGH/HMS appointments, Ken directed the Institute for Molecular Medicine at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) and was an adjunct professor of The Salk Institute.

A graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Chien went on to earn his MD and PhD from Temple University in Pennsylvania. After completing his internship, residency, and cardiology fellowship training at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, he joined the faculty of the UCSD Departments of Medicine and Cardiology and the Center for Molecular Genetics. Subsequently, Dr. Chien became the Director of the UCSD Institute of Molecular Medicine and directed the joint UCSD-Salk Institute National Institutes of Health Molecular Medicine Training Program. Given his longstanding interest in training physician-scientists, he has served as an advisor/panel member of several private biomedical foundations, including the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. He also has served as a senior consultant and board member to several biotechnology and large pharmas over the past decade, fostering collaborative ties between academia and the private sector. Dr. Chien was also heavily involved in the establishment of the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Peking University, currently the premier site for cardiovascular science in China. He has received several awards for his work, including the Pasarow Foundation Award, the Walter B. Cannon Award of the American Physiological Society, foreign-elect membership in the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and the Austrian Academy of Sciences, an honorary Doctorate of Science from the University of Edinburgh, and a Distingiushed Professorship from the Swedish Medical Research Council.