Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD, FAHA

Dr. Joseph Wu is president of the American Heart Association (AHA) for 2023-24. As president, Dr. Wu is the chief volunteer scientific and medical officer of the AHA providing oversight of medical, scientific and public health matters and related public policy. He presides over the Association’s Science Advisory & Coordinating Committee.

Dr. Wu is Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and serves as the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University. Dr. Wu received his MD from Yale University and PhD (Molecular & Medical Pharmacology) at UCLA. He is board certified in cardiology.

Dr. Wu’s lab works on cardiovascular genomics and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to understand basic disease mechanisms, accelerate drug discovery and screening, develop “clinical trial in a dish” concept, and implement precision medicine for patients. Dr. Wu has published >450 manuscripts with H-index of 114 on Google scholar. He is listed as top 1% of highly cited researchers by Web of Science for past 4 years (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

Dr. Wu is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award, NIH Roadmap Transformative Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) given out by President Obama at the White House, and the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Innovation in Regulatory Science Award.

From the American Heart Association, Dr. Wu has been honored with an Established Investigator Award, Distinguished Scientist Award, AHA Merit Award, and was the first recipient of the Joseph A. Vita Award in 2015 for his transformational work published in AHA journals. He is also a past chair of the Association’s Research Committee.

Dr. Wu serves on the FDA Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee and is on the Board of the Keystone Symposia. He is an elected member of Association of University Cardiologists (AUC), American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Association of Physicians (AAP), and National Academy of Medicine (NAM).