UofL’s Roberto Bolli, M.D., left, is shown with Eugene Braunwald, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, considered the father of modern cardiology. Braunwald will be the keynote speaker at the Stem Cell Summit at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in California in November. Bolli is organizing this year’s summit.

Roberto Bolli, MD, chief of the division of Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, will lead the Stem Cell Summit at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association in November in Anaheim, California.

The summit, a high-profile event within the meeting of approximately 25,000 clinicians and researchers from around the world, brings together top international experts who will present the latest and most exciting work in stem cells, cell therapy and cardiac regeneration.

The association meeting is Nov. 11-15; the summit will be held on Nov. 14.

Bolli, director of UofL’s Institute of Molecular Cardiology and scientific director of the Cardiovascular Innovation Institute at UofL, was asked by the association to organize the event this year. He is well-known in the field of stem cell research, and last month he and his team at UofL received a $13.8 million award from the National Institutes of Health to study a promising new type of adult cardiac stem cell that has the potential to treat heart failure.

Bolli also serves as editor of Circulation Research, an official journal of the American Heart Association that is considered the world’s leading journal on basic and translational research in cardiovascular medicine.

He will give the opening introduction, as well as an overview before each part of the summit, which will have two sessions in the morning and two in the afternoon.

“I’m honored to be selected to lead the summit this year,” Bolli said. “It reaffirms UofL’s leadership in the field of cell therapy for cardiovascular disease. This will be an outstanding program and I expect it to be well-received.”