James T. Willerson, MD

James T. Willerson, MD, is the president and medical director, director of Cardiology Research, and co-director of the Cullen Cardiovascular Research Laboratories at Texas Heart Institute (THI).

In 1989, he was named the Edward Randall III Chair, Department of Internal Medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. He was president of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston from 2001 to 2008 and was named the Alkek-Williams Distinguished Professor there at the same time. Dr. Willerson was appointed president-elect of THI in 2004 and became president and medical director in 2008. He is also an adjunct professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is the former chief of Cardiology at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital and the former chief of Medical Services at Memorial Hermann Hospital.

Dr. Willerson is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, where he has been named a distinguished alumnus. He was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he earned his medical degree and has also been named a distinguished alumnus. He completed his medical and cardiology training as an intern, resident, and research and clinical fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and his training as a clinical associate at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

He is the former chairman of the National American Heart Association Research Committee and of the NIH Cardiovascular and Renal Study Section. He has received the Award of Merit from the American Heart Association and has served as a member of the board of directors and steering committee of the National American Heart Association. Before coming to The University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Dr. Willerson was professor of Medicine and director of the Cardiovascular Division at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, and director and principal investigator of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute's Specialized Center of Research under a major grant from the NIH. Upon his departure, UT Southwestern Medical School honored Dr. Willerson by establishing the James T. Willerson Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine.

Dr. Willerson has served as a visiting professor and invited lecturer at more than 170 institutions. He has received numerous national and international awards, including the James. B. Herrick Award from the American Heart Association in 1993. He was named the American College of Cardiology's Distinguished Scientist for 2000. He has been elected a Fellow in the Royal Society of Medicine of the United Kingdom and has been honored by cardiology societies around the world. Dr. Willerson has been elected into the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science. In 2002, he received the Distinguished Service Award from the Council of Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association. He also received the Career Achievement Award at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics 2005 meeting. The award honors his outstanding work as an internationally distinguished cardiologist, research scientist, educator and noted editor of Circulation. Columbia University Medical Center named Dr. Willerson as the 2007 Lewis Katz Visiting Professor in Cardiovascular Research and awarded him a Katz Prize in Cardiovascular Research.

He has served on editorial boards for numerous professional publications including Journal of Clinical Investigation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Willerson served as the editor-in-chief of Circulation, the premier journal of the American Heart Association, for 11 years—the longest tenure of any editor with an AHA publication. He is editor-in-chief of the Texas Heart Institute Journal. He has authored or co-authored 19 textbooks and more than 800 scientific articles. Dr. Willerson is one of 4 editors for Cardiovascular Medicine, Third Edition, published in 2007.

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