Gordon A. Ewy, MD, is professor emeritus of medicine (cardiology) and director emeritus of the Sarver Heart Center at the University Of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson AZ. He occupied the Gordon A. Ewy, M.D. Distinguished Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine from 2002 to 2013. As a founding member of cardiology in 1969 and Chief of the Section of Cardiology from 1982-2010 he has been integral to the development of clinical and research programs that have resulted in the Cardiovascular Services at University of Arizona College of Medicine being a peer of the nation’s better academic institutions. As the previous director, the Cardiology Fellowship Program has graduated over 100 fellows as trained cardiologists as of 2009. Heading the Sarver Heart Center since 1991, Dr. Ewy directed the fundraising for the Sarver Heart Center building, dedicated in 2000, and oversaw its design and construction. In addition, he has spearheaded fundraising efforts to establish and foster endowments for academic positions in the College of Medicine and to support the research of Sarver Heart Center members. The Sarver Heart Center is now home to 13 endowed chairs, 2 endowed fellowships, 3 endowed professorships, and 2 future endowed chairs set up by annuities. In the area of research, Dr. Ewy has made significant contributions to defibrillation and resuscitation of patients with cardiac arrest. He brought together experts from various departments to form the Sarver Heart Center Resuscitation Research Group. Their development of a new approach to cardiopulmonary resuscitation for primary cardiac arrest, called Cardiocerebral Resuscitation, has been shown to dramatically improve the survival rate in patients suffering witnessed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. This new approach consists of a community, pre-hospital, and hospital components. The Community component begins at the scene with bystander-initiated chest compression only CPR (CO-CPR) and continues with a modified protocol used by paramedics (pre-hospital component) and most recently the hospital component where therapeutic hypothermia, early cardiac catheterization and other aspects for therapy of the post-cardiac arrest syndrome are available. The result has been doubling or tripling survival of patients with out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, in each area in which Cardiocerebral Resuscitation has been introduced.

Professor Ian Wilcox was born in Melbourne and undertook medical training in Newcastle on Tyne (UK), including a BMedSci with First Class Honours in Immunology. His postgraduate education and training in Cardiology was at Sydney University and Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. Professor Wilcox's clinical research career includes a PhD on Predicting Risk in Unstable Angina funded by a National Heart Foundation Scholarship. His postdoctoral research on the Cardiovascular Consequences of Obstructive Sleep Apnoea was funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council in collaboration with Professor Colin Sullivan. He has supervised 8 PhD and Masters Students. Current research interests include the role of sleep apnoea in cardiac arrhythmias, congestive heart failure, large vessel vascular disease and atherosclerosis. He has over 40 publications in major journals and 1200 citations in the medical literature. In addition he has a major interest in innovation in clinical research and practice in cardiology including new methods to detect heart failure decompensation. Professor Wilcox jointly established the Cardiac Surgery Program at Strathfield Private Hospital in 1991 and founded Central Sydney Cardiology, an academic private practice, in 1999.