Meet the Chief

Christopher Kramer, MD

After receiving his A.B. from Harvard and his M.D. from UCSF, Dr. Christopher Kramer completed residency and chief residency in internal medicine and fellowship in cardiology at the University of Pennsylvania. His first faculty appointment was at Allegheny General Hospital, MCP/Hahnemann School of Medicine where he directed the cardiology fellowship program. In 1999, he moved to the University of Virginia where he is now the George A. Beller/Lantheus Medical Imaging Distinguished Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Chief of the Cardiovascular Division.

Dr. Kramer’s principal research interest has been in the application of cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) to the cardiovascular system in studies ranging from mice to large animals to man and he has published over 260 peer-reviewed publications, 4 books, and over 100 book chapters, editorials, and reviews in the area of left ventricular remodeling and myocardial viability, atherosclerotic plaque imaging, peripheral arterial disease (PAD), and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

In addition to NIH R01 funding in CMR of PAD, he is co-principal investigator of a 2755 patient, 44-site, NHLBI-funded U01 international registry study of HCM. He directs a NIBIB-funded cardiovascular imaging T32 fellowship training program. He is presently Treasurer of the American College of Cardiology (ACC). He has served as President of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR), Chair of the Imaging Council of the ACC, and member and chair of the Clinical and Integrative Cardiovascular Sciences NIH study section. He is presently Associate Editor for Imaging at JACC, a member of the editorial boards of Circulation, Circulation Cardiovascular Imaging, and Vascular Medicine, and was, until recently, Executive Editor of JACC Cardiovascular Imaging. He is also a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of University Cardiologists in 2015 won the Gold Medal of the SCMR, and in 2021 was named the ACC Distinguished Mentor.