Science Committee

Dr Almahmeed is a Consultant Cardiologist at the Heart and Vascular Institute in Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi. He is also a Clinical Assistant Professor at the UAE University and has an Adjunct Staff position at Cleveland Clinic, Ohio. Dr Almahmeed completed his undergraduate medical training at the medical school in the University of Southampton, England. He continued his post graduate studies in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. This was followed by a fellowship in Echocardiography at the same institution. He received his Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in Internal Medicine in 1994 and in Cardiology in 1995. Subsequently he became a Fellow of the American College of Chest Physicians (1996), Fellow of the American College of Physicians (1998), Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (1998) and Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology in 2004. He is a foundation member of the Gulf Heart Association and the Emirates Cardiac Society. Under his leadership in the Emirates Cardiac Society, the Society won the bid to host the World Congress of Cardiology in Dubai in 2012, the World Tobacco or Health Congress in Abu Dhabi in 2015, the Asia Pacific Congress of Cardiology in Abu Dhabi in 2015 and World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology in 2016. He also established an annual meeting for the Emirates Cardiac Society in UAE. In 2000, he initiated World Heart Day in the UAE. Today it is celebrated by many institutions across the country. During his tenure as Deputy Chief Medical Officer, he was chair of the Quality steering committee. Under his leadership SKMC was one of the first hospitals in Abu Dhabi to receive Joint Commission International Accreditation in 2008. In 2013, he initiated the first Cardiology Fellowship Program in the UAE. As Chair of the CME committee, at the Health Authority, he established mandatory CME hours for health care professionals and also established a system for CME accreditation. Dr Almahmeed’s research interests include Coronary Artery Disease prevention in the developing countries, Hypertension, Dyslipidemia, and Registries on Acute Coronary Syndromes, Heart Failure and Atrial Fibrillation. He was the national coordinator for the Inter-Heart Study. He is on the steering committee of the Gulf Race, Gulf Coast, Gulf Care and Gulf Safe Registries. He has over 100 publications to his credit, and is currently the national coordinator for a number of Multi-Center Trials including Elixa, Examine and Garfield Trials. Dr Almahmeed’s expertise is in non-invasive Cardiology/Echocardiography and Heart Disease in Pregnancy.

Tazeen H. Jafar, MD MPH FASN
Professor Tazeen H. Jafar, MD MPH FASN is a nephrologist and researcher, globally renowned for her extensive expertise and experience in clinical trials, health systems research, and implementation science. Her work focuses on addressing major health challenges such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and chronic kidney disease. She is particularly known for her contributions to risk prediction and the development of community-based interventions to improve health outcomes.
Dr. Jafar is a Professor in the Program in Health Services and Systems Research at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and holds multiple key roles: Visiting Consultant in Renal Medicine at Singapore General Hospital, Visiting Professor of Medicine at Aga Khan University, Karachi, Consultant Nephrologist at Durham VA Healthcare System, and Professor at Duke Global Health Institute, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Professor Jafar went to medical school at the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan, followed by residency in Medicine-Pediatrics (and dual board certification) from University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and fellowship in clinical nephrology (with board certification in Nephrology) and clinical research at Tufts Medical Center, Boston. She also obtained master’s in public health from Harvard University.
Professor Jafar has been at the forefront of impactful research on chronic non-communicable diseases in global health for over 25 years. She serves as the chief principal investigator of the COBRA-BPS trial, a groundbreaking study conducted across 30 rural villages in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. This trial demonstrated the effectiveness and scalability of a community health worker-led intervention for blood pressure control, with the potential to reach nearly one billion people in low- and middle-income countries.
Professor Jafar received several awards (e.g. the Senior Clinician Scientist Award) in Singapore for her seminal research on hypertension management. She led significant studies on GFR estimation and kidney disease risk prediction for South Asian populations and is an integral member of the global CKD Prognosis Consortium. A committed mentor, she has trained numerous MD, MS, and Ph.D. graduates who now hold leadership positions. Additionally, she actively participates in global policy forums addressing non-communicable diseases and serves on funding panels and strategy committees for major organisations like the MRC and Wellcome Trust.

Dr Neal is Professor of Medicine at UNSW Sydney and Executive Director of the George Institute for Global Health, Australia where he has been based since the Institute was established in 1999. Dr Neal is also Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at Imperial College London in the United Kingdom. He has a medical degree (1990), a PhD (2000) and is a Fellow of the UK Royal College of Physicians, the American Heart Association and the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. Dr Neal’s primary contributions have been to the discovery of new approaches to the management of blood pressure, diabetes and chronic kidney disease. He has also established a major program of food policy research at the George Institute which leads the world in using big data tools to bring transparency and accountability to the food system. His current research focus is on building the translational research capacity of The George Institute with an initial focus on switching the world’s salt supply from regular salt to potassium-enriched salt.

Over a 25-year research career Dr Neal has published more than 500 scientific papers and accrued over 150,000 citations of his published work including over 90,000 citations in the last 5 years. Dr Neal’s science has generated multiple reports in the very highest ranking general medical journals including the Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association. The George Institute which the he helped to establish in 1999 has been ranked regularly among the top 10 research institutions in the world for scientific impact by the SCImago institutions Rankings World report. In 2015, and again in 2017 and every year since Dr Neal has been identified by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics as a ‘highly cited author’ placing him in the top fraction of a per cent of the most highly cited researchers across all disciplines, worldwide. The British Medical Journal impact tool identifies him as The George Institute researcher with the greatest impact on policy deriving from his research outputs.

Dr. Antonio Luiz Ribeiro is Professor of Internal Medicine and Chair for Research and Innovation in the University Hospital of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where he served as Medical Officer (2006-2010) and Director-General (2010-2014). He is the Past President of the International Society of Electrocardiology and Associate Editor of the BMJ Heart and Journal of Electrocardiology. He has been working with digital health and implementation science and is the leader of the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais, a large telehealth network in Brazil, with more than 1,000 remote points, with a focus in tele-cardiology: this network has performed more than 5 million ECGs since 2006.