Newswise — STONY BROOK, NY, January 16, 2018—Hal Skopicki, MD, PhD, has been appointed Chief of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine and Deputy Director of Operations in the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, announced Senior Vice President for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine, Kenneth Kaushansky, MD and Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine, Vincent Yang, MD, PhD. Dr. Skopicki is a renowned heart failure specialist, who has led the major effort in advancing the care of patients with advanced cardiac disease since his arrival at Stony Brook in 2006. He succeeds Javed Butler, MD, MPH, who is leaving Stony Brook to assume a new position as Chair of Department of Medicine at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine.

“Dr. Skopicki brings with him an exciting vision for the Division’s immediate and long-term future,” said Dr. Kaushansky. “He will provide leadership in advancing the educational, clinical and research core missions of the University and play an instrumental role in the strategic planning, oversight, management and programmatic development for cardiology services in the context of the Heart Institute.”

Since joining Stony Brook Medicine, Dr. Skopicki established and directed the Heart Failure and Cardiomyopathy Center, a multidisciplinary program of excellence championing the central role of the patient within the context of state-of-the-art options. He also created, together with Allison McLarty, MD, the first Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) program on Long Island to implant advanced pumps, recently implanting their 100th device. These efforts have enabled Stony Brook to be only one of a handful of programs in the entire US honored with repeated Joint Commission recognition for both programs. Dr. Skopicki’s research focuses on new medications, stem cell therapy and alternatives to transplantation for treating heart failure and cardiomyopathies, at home/remote monitoring for heart failure and understanding the genetic and serum predictors of cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Skopicki received a dual MD and PhD degree from the Chicago Medical School/Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science and received their distinguished alumnus award in 2007. He performed his residency training in Internal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital where he was selected for the clinical investigator pathway and completed a clinical fellowship in Cardiology and post-doctoral fellowship in molecular cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Following his training, Hal joined the Division of Circulatory Physiology/Heart Failure Program at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons under Milton Packer, MD, where he also directed an NIH-funded research program in molecular cardiology. He is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, Fellow of the American Heart Association, Fellow of the Heart Failure Society of America, Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the prestigious Heart Failure Research Network.

To learn more about the Stony Brook University Heart Institute, visit heart.stonybrookmedicine.edu.

Note for Local Editors: Dr. Skopicki lives in Roslyn and is a native Long Islander.

 

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About Stony Brook University Heart Institute

Stony Brook University Heart Institute is located within Stony Brook University Hospital as part of Long Island’s premier university-based medical center. The Heart Institute offers a comprehensive, multidisciplinary program for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease. The staff includes 50 full-time and community-based, board-certified cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons, as well as 350 specially trained anesthesiologists, nurses, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, respiratory therapists, surgical technologists, perfusionists, and other support staff. Their combined expertise provides state-of-the-art interventional and surgical capabilities in 24-hour cardiac catheterization labs and surgical suites. And while the Heart Institute clinical staff offers the latest advances in medicine, its physician-scientists are also actively enhancing knowledge of the heart and blood vessels through basic biomedical studies and clinical research.

 

About Stony Brook Medicine

Stony Brook Medicine elevates all of Stony Brook University’s health-related initiatives: education, research and patient care. It includes six Health Sciences schools — Dental Medicine, Health Technology and Management, Medicine, Nursing, Social Welfare and Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences — as well as Stony Brook University Hospital, Stony Brook Children’s Hospital and more than 90 community-based healthcare settings throughout Suffolk County. To learn more, visit stonybrookmedicine.edu.