King's College London

Dr Joaquim Nunes Vieira has been awarded a prize and made a finalist for the Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award, by the American Heart Association for his research analysing the role of gene expression and the development of the heart within the embryo.

"This enabled me to build up new collaborations and network with the leaders in basic cardiovascular research. In addition, being in Chicago for the BCVS 2024 has been a fantastic opportunity to advance my career as an independent researcher and promote King's overseas."

Dr Vieira was one of four finalists for the Outstanding Early Career Investigator Award category. As a finalist, he travelled to the Basic Cardiovascular Sciences 2024 meeting (BCVS2024) in Chicago which took place between 22-25 July. He presented a talk on his research alongside his fellow finalists. Following the presentations, a vote took place and Dr Vieira was announced as runner up for the award.

His talk, entitled “Noncoding regulation of epicardial gene expression and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition during heart development”, summarised his innovative work conducted over the last few years at King’s and the University of Oxford. For being shortlisted, Joaquim was invited to the conference gala dinner.

Dr Vieira also received the prestigious Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award at the BCVS2024 meeting for submitting an abstract on his research looking at the molecular mechanisms that control the development of the heart during its formation in the embryo.

Dr Vieira’s award-winning research was sponsored by his BHF Intermediate Fellowship. You can learn more about it by listening to an interview he did with the podcast of the Circulation Research journal – the flagship journal of the AHA.