Dr. Veli Topkara, MD, MSc
Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Medicine
We welcome Dr. Veli Topkara as new core faculty of the Cardiovascular Research Center. Dr. Topkara is a faculty member in the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine within the Department of Medicine and the new medical director of Heart Failure, Cardiac Transplantation, and Mechanical Circulatory Support. Dr. Topkara went to medical school at Hacettepe University, Faculty of Medicine, Ankara, Turkey. After medical school, he completed a master of science at Washington University, St. Louis, MO, followed by residency in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. He did his fellowships in cardiovascular medicine and advanced heart failure and transplantation at Washington University and joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2014.
In addition to his 10 years of experience as an expert in heart failure and cardiac transplantation including being the medical director of the Mechanical Circulatory Support Program at Columbia University, Dr. Topkara is an NIH-funded basic science investigator whose research focuses on transcriptional regulation of heart failure and myocardial recovery. He also has a strong interest in the potential applications of artificial intelligence in heart failure and the use of machine learning to optimize the donor selection process in cardiac transplantation.