Kalyanam Shivkumar

Dr. Shivkumar is a physician scientist who serves as the inaugural director of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center & EP Programs (since its establishment in 2002). He is a graduate of the UCLA STAR Program (class of 2000) and his field of specialization is interventional cardiac electrophysiology. He leads a large group at UCLA (a diverse group of fifteen faculty members, several trainees and sixty staff + allied health professionals) involved in clinical care, teaching, research and biomedical innovation. The team provides state of the art clinical care, has developed several innovative therapies (e.g. epicardial ablation, neuromodulation) for the non-pharmacological management of cardiac arrhythmias and other cardiac interventions. Dr. Shivkumar also serves as the director and chief of the UCLA Cardiovascular and Interventional Programs for the Health System. Dr. Shivkumar’s research work relates to mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias in humans especially the role of the autonomic nervous system and his research work transcends the perspective of a single organ and has implications for neurovisceral sciences in general.