Professor Dr Christian Heiss has a joint appointment between the University of Surrey and Surrey and Sussex NHS Healthcare Trust at East Surrey Hospital as a Clinical Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Head of the Clinical Medicine Section and Honorary Consultant respectively. He is an internationally recognized expert in diagnostic, interventional and experimental cardiovascular medicine. His research interests include basic mechanisms of vascular homeostasis and human interventions for improvement of cardiovascular health and healthy aging. His clinical work focuses on the prevention and endovascular treatment of complex multi-level atherosclerosis in particular in patients with peripheral artery disease and diabetes. He is an integral part of the multi-disciplinary diabetic foot team.
Professor Heiss has previously headed the Vascular Medicine programme at the Department of Cardiology, Pulmonology, and Vascular Medicine of the University of Düsseldorf in Germany. He received training in basic cardiovascular research, interventional cardiology and vascular medicine. After completing medical school and his doctoral dissertation at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, he did a post-doctoral research fellowship in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Düsseldorf and an American Heart Association research fellowship in Molecular Cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco. He was also an affiliated faculty member at the Nutrition Department of the University of California Davis. He then returned to Germany as a clinical consultant and headed a translational research group. He received the prestigious Eden’s Award for Excellence in Cardiovascular Research of the University of Düsseldorf for his work on endothelial dysfunction and adaptation in the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis.