Saurabh Kumar PhD, FCSANZ, FRACP, FHRS

A/Professor Saurabh Kumar is a Cardiologist, Cardiac Electrophysiologist, Staff Specialist, and Program Director for Ventricular Arrhythmias and Sudden Cardiac Death at Westmead Hospital, Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine, Sydney Medical School, University of Sydney. Previously National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia’s Career Development fellow, current Early-Mid Career Fellow NSW Health, ex-Chair of the Heart Rhythm Council, Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand, and Research lead of the Translational/Clinical Electrophysiology Arm of the Westmead Applied Research Centre, University of Sydney.

After completing his Cardiology training at Westmead in 2010, he embarked on a prestigious clinical and research electrophysiology fellowship at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, under the supervision of Professor Jonathan Kalman, who is a national thought leader in cardiac electrophysiology. A/Prof. Kumar was awarded the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Thesis of 2013 titled “Pathogenesis and Treatment of Human Atrial Fibrillation”. His seminal contributions to the mechanisms and effects of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on human atrial fibrillation won him the prestigious Ralph Reader Prize from the Cardiac Society of ANZ in 2012. A/Prof. Kumar thereafter embarked on a successful 3.5-year postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, under the supervision of an international thought leader in electrophysiology, Prof. William Stevenson, studying the mechanism and treatment of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac arrest. A/Prof. Kumar has made several key contributions to the role of programmed ventricular stimulation in risk stratification of sudden cardiac death post-myocardial infarction, the role of contact force technology on outcomes of catheter ablation of cardiac arrhythmias, novel interventional techniques in catheter ablation of ventricular arrhythmias, substrate characterization of diseases that lead to ventricular arrhythmias, and in the understanding the natural history of lamin A/C cardiomyopathy, a highly arrhythmogenic condition leading to cardiac arrest.