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He is a cardiac surgeon and researcher and came to UNC from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, S.C.

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John S. Ikonomidis, M.D., Ph.D.

John S. Ikonomidis, M.D., Ph.D., joined the UNC faculty on March 1 as a professor of surgery and chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery.

Dr. Ikonomidis, a cardiac surgeon, earned his M.D. from the University of Toronto in 1989; he also completed his residency in General Surgery at the University of Toronto in 1997 and earned a Ph.D. in cardiac physiology there in 1995. He finished his residency in Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University in 2000.

He was a faculty member at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) from 2000 to 2017. From 2000 to 2009, he served as chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the Ralph H. Johnson VA Medical Center. In 2006, he became surgical director of MUSC’s Cardiac Transplantation and Mechanical Circulatory Support Program. In 2009, he was named chief of MUSC’s Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery and program director for its cardiothoracic surgery residency program. In 2010, he was named co-director for the MUSC Center for Heart Valve Disease and in 2011, he became co-director of the MUSC Heart and Vascular Service Line. His clinical interests include thoracic aortic surgery, heart transplantation and mechanical circulatory support, and valve surgery.

Dr. Ikonomidis has been a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded surgeon-scientist since 2001, and he has served as a co-investigator on several VA Merit awards. He is an author of more than 150 articles published in medical journals. His NIH-funded research interests include the study of a unique murine model of thoracic aortic aneurysms as well as studies in clinical aneurysm specimens. He also has been an investigator or principal investigator on clinical trials in areas that include heart valve devices, ventricular assist devices, myocardial protection, and intraoperative interrogation of the myocardium, to name but a few. Dr. Ikonomidis is current chair of the Bioengineering, Technology and Surgical Sciences (BTSS) Study Section at NIH and he is onthe Data and Safety Monitoring Board of the Cardiothoracic Surgical Trials Network.

He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the American College of Surgeons, the American Heart Association, and the American College of Cardiology. He chairs the Society of Thoracic Surgeons’ Workforce on Cardiac Surgery as well as the Joint Council for Thoracic Surgical Education’s Integrated Six Year Cardiothoracic Surgery Program Analysis Committee. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Heart Valve Disease, The Journal of Cardiac Surgery, Circulation, Aorta and The Journal of the American Heart Association and is associate editor of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.