LaPrincess Brewer, M.D., is the founding director of FAITH! (Fostering African-American Improvement in Total Health), a research and cardiovascular health and wellness program in collaboration with Black churches and community centers in Rochester, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. This work has led Dr. Brewer to receive recognition, competitive grants, and awards like the National Institutes of Health Rising Star award.

Dr. Brewer is a preventive cardiologist and associate professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. She chose a career as a physician-scientist because she wanted to combine her analytical nature, love of discovery and desire for social impact.

She is also lauded for her work as an educator and mentor. She was honored as a 2022 highest-rated educator by the Mayo Clinic Department of Medicine and Internal Medicine Residency Program.

Joseph Maleszewski, M.D. is an expert in cardiovascular pathology and is current president of the Society for Cardiovascular Pathology. His research is prolific, with 256 peer-reviewed publications and 74 book chapters. He is lead author of the book, Disorders of the Heart and Blood Vessels.

Cardiology may have been a more obvious choice for a medical student like Dr. Maleszewski who had his heart set on the heart. But he was most drawn to the detective work of diagnosis in pathology, uncovering underlying issues and root causes. He leverages this detective mindset in his work, which aims to improve diagnostic and prognostic approaches to cardiovascular and pulmonary disease.

He shares his expertise as an educator, mentor, and lecturer. He is a professor of medicine and professor of laboratory medicine and pathology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He is senior associate dean for academic affairs at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine.

As a child, Lang Wu, Ph.D., witnessed his grandfather battle esophageal cancer. This experience motivated him to consider a career that could help alleviate this kind of suffering. Eventually, his deep interest in biology and desire to lessen the burden of disease would lead to a lauded career as a genetic and molecular epidemiologic researcher.

Dr. Wu is an associate professor at the University of Hawai‘i Cancer Center and the founding director and principal investigator of the Pacific Center for Genome Research at the university.

His work has led to the identification of hundreds of susceptibility gene candidates for prostate, pancreatic and breast cancers, as well as multiple epigenetic, protein, metabolite, and glycan biomarkers for prostate and pancreatic cancer. He is an author of over 110 published papers, an associate editor for Molecular Carcinogenesis, and sits on the editorial board of several other journals.

During his internship in his native Ireland, Matthew Griffin, M.B., B.Ch., B.A.O., became fascinated with nephrology.

Dr. Griffin trained and worked in nephrology and transplant medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester from 1992 to 2008 and is currently head of the Discipline (Department) of Medicine and a professor of transplant biology at the University of Galway’s School of Medicine in Ireland.

His career has been marked by impactful, original and translational research including new contributions to polycystic kidney disease and basic T-cell immunology, vitamin D and its impact on immunity, the immunological basis of kidney disease, kidney and pancreas transplant outcomes and complications, and immunomodulatory allogeneic stromal cell therapies.

In 2006, Dr. Kirsch was a cardiovascular radiology fellow at Mayo Clinic. The fellowship focused on cardiac and vascular uses of CT and MRI, technologies which were in their infancy at the time. In just one year, Dr. Kirsch was the first author on six publications, one of which won the 2007 Radiological Society of North America Roentgen Resident/Fellow Research Award.

Since then, Dr. Kirsch has accumulated a long list of leadership roles not only in the clinical, educational and editorial worlds of cardiovascular radiology, but in hospital administration. In addition to his medical degree from the Universidad de Monterrey School of Medicine, in Mexico, he has a master’s in business administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He holds multiple leadership positions within Cleveland Clinic Florida, including chair of the Florida Region Imaging Institute, chair of the Lang Family Department of Imaging, and section head of Cardiac Imaging.

Carmen Terzic, M.D., Ph.D. started fencing competitively in Venezuela when she was just 8 years old. She competed for 20 years, including 14 years on the Venezuelan national fencing team, and earned a place in the Sport Hall of Fame in Venezuela.

When she stopped competing, she didn’t put aside her love of sport or her rigorous work ethic — instead, these qualities propelled her into a successful medical career focusing on cardiovascular rehabilitation, regenerative medicine, and stem-cell based cardiac repair.

She is a physiatrist at Mayo Clinic, and professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation and associate professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. She is the former chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and current medical director of the Cardiac Rehabilitation Program. She helped found and is co-director of the Mayo Clinic Rehabilitation Medicine Research Center.