In 1983, Dr. Folkert Belzer, Chair of the Department of Surgery at the University of Wisconsin, had the great foresight to offer a faculty position to a young Turkish surgeon, Dr. Munci Kalayoglu, then a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Kalayoglu accepted Dr. Belzer’s offer to join the UW surgery faculty as a pediatric surgeon and to establish a liver transplant program to complement the UW’s kidney and pancreas transplant programs.

Dr. Kalayoglu spent months preparing UW Hospital to become a liver transplant center, and performed the first liver transplant at the University of Wisconsin in July 1984.

Since that time, he has built the UW program into one of the finest liver transplant programs in the country. He performed the UW’s 1,000th liver transplant on July 21,
2001.

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Title of Winning Proposal: H MR Spectroscopic Investigation of Manic Patients Before and After Administration of a Protein Kinase C Inhibitor: Tamoxifen: A Double Blind Placebo Controlled Study. Aysegul Yildiz.

Aysegul Yildiz, M.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychiatry
Dokuz Eylul Medical School
Izmir, Turkey

Dr.Yildiz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Dokuz Eylul Medical School, Izmir, Turkey. She is a graduate of the Hacettepe University, Medical School. She completed her residency training in psychiatry at the Dokuz Eylul Medical School.

Dr.Yildiz spent 2.5 years as a post-doctoral research fellow, both at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota and at the Bipolar Program, MGH, Harvard Medical School. During this period, under the directions of Drs. Ugurbil, Renshaw and Sachs, she gained experience in the fields of neuroimaging, neuropsychopharmacology and phenomenology of bipolar illness.

Dr.Yildiz is currently the recipient of several research grants, including those from the Stanley Medical Research Institute. In addition, she is the recipient of the Fellowship Award from the ECNP (2002); and Independent Investigator Award from the Pfizer-U.S.A (2002).

Dr.Yildiz’s areas of clinical and research interest include study of pathophysiology of bipolar illness, evaluating therapeutic effects of putative anti-manic agents, and in collaboration with McLean Hospital, Harvard, and NIMH, molecular biology and neuroimaging applications in bipolar disorders.

Dr. Yildiz has authored more than twenty articles in peer-reviewed journals and has been an invited speaker at both national and international scientific and clinical meetings.

Source 

Dr. Murat Tuzcu is Professor of Medicine, Director of the Intravascular Ultrasound Laboratory, a staff physician, and an interventional cardiologist at The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. He also serves as the European and Canadian Regional Director of the International Center. Through this work in the International Center, Dr. Tuzcu is involved in medical education of doctors from all over the world and he treats patients from all corners of the world. Dr. Tuzcu¡¦s specialty interests cover a wide range of interventional cardiology procedures. In addition to catheter-based treatment of coronary artery disease, his expertise includes balloon valvuloplasties, catheter-based treatment of hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, and interatrial septal defects. He is certified as a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine in Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases and in Interventional Cardiology.

Dr. Tuzcu received his medical degree from Istanbul Medical Faculty in Turkey, where he completed his internship and residency in medicine. He was then awarded fellowships by The Cleveland Clinic in cardiovascular disease and interventional cardiology before accepting a fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston as a Clinical and Research Fellow in Cardiology. He was appointed to The Cleveland Clinic in 1992.

Dr. Tuzcu has held several academic appointments including instructor in Medicine and Research at Harvard Medical School, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and professor of medicine at Ohio State University.

The Intravascular Ultrasound Research Laboratory that Dr. Tuzcu directs serves as the core laboratory for a number of multi-center trials studying regression of atherosclerosis using intravascular ultrasonography and impact of various interventions. Dr. Tuzcu¡¦s current research interests focus on the use of various imaging modalities to elucidate the development and progress of artherosclerosis. He has made seminal contributions to the understanding of transplant coronary artery disease and subclinical atherosclerosis using intravascular ultrasound imaging. He is also involved in the investigation of catheter-based treatments for valvular heart disease and hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, and he is a member of the steering committees of several multicenter trails investigating the impact of pharmocologic intervention on the natural history of atherosclerotic plaques. He holds several patents involving hybrid catheter design.

Dr. Tuzcu has directed or co-directed many national and international symposiums and professional conferences worldwide, and has been an invited lecturer to many others.. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications including many textbooks chapters, and serves as a reviewer for many academic journals.

Dr. Tuzcu is a Fellow in the American College of Cardiology and a Fellow in the American College of Physicians. He is a member of the American Heart Association, the Society for Cardiac Angiography and Interventions, and the Turkish Society of Cardiology. Dr. Tuzcu was voted into the recent listing of ¡§Best Physicians in America,¡¨ and he is listed in the National Registry of Who’s Who.

Source: www.clevelandclinic.org

Ilke Sipahi is the head of the research team in Cleveland who made a surprising discovery that may change the way doctors manage their patients’ heart disease. They have found that lowering the current recommended blood pressure may save more lives. To read an article on this subject which appeared in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, please click here.

Ilke Sipahi was born in 1974 in Istanbul, Turkey. In 1992, he graduated from the Istanbul Kadikoy Anatolian High School with honors. In the same year, he got the Scientist Development Scholarship of the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey due to success in National Student Selection Examination. In 1998 he got his medical degree from Cerrahpasa Faculty of Medicine English Department with honors.

In September 1998 he ranked 1st in both clinical and basic sciences among over 14.000 medical doctors in the Turkish Medical Residency Entrance examination. Subsequently he finished his cardiology fellowship in Istanbul University Cardiology Institute.

In 2004, he became a research fellow in Intravascular Ultrasound Laboratory of The Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio where he worked primarily on progression and regression of atherosclerosis, antiatherosclerotic drugs and vascular remodeling.

In 2006, he got the Peskind Memorial Award of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation due to his work on the effect of various blood pressure levels on progression of coronary atherosclerosis. Dr.Sipahi published extensively in several medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of American College of Cardiology and Journal of the American Medical Association. He serves as a reviewer to the editorial office of numerous scientific journals and is a member of the European Society of Cardiology and the Turkish Society of Cardiology. He is currently working as a clinical fellow in the Heart Failure and Transplant Medicine Program of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

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Born in 1958 in Turkey
Attended the Austrian St. George’s College in Istanbul
After having successfully completed his study of medicine and his cycle of duty in the different medical wards at AKH in Vienna, in 1987 Kinay, with a friend of his founded the travel company GULET.
With the invention of Magic-Life-Clubs (1990), which were from price aimed at the middle class and offered them an all-inclusive-holiday, “Kinay has made a name for himself in the travel branch as a visionary and prophet.”
In 2004, Magic Life Group and the group’s Gulet Touropa Touristik were sold to TUI, one of the world’s largest tour operators.
In 2005 Kınay founded The O Property Collection (OPC), the new model in ultra-luxury property development, based in Vienna
He purchased the Island of Dellis Cay, which is part of the Turks and Caicos Islands, for $50 million from an Italian aristocrat

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