Current Members

Dr. Fadi G. Akar, Ph.D. completed his doctoral degree in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and his post-doctoral training in molecular cardiology at Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Akar joined the Faculty in the Department of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in 2004, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in 2007 and Yale University School of Medicine in 2020. Dr. Akar's laboratory is dedicated to uncovering the mechanisms that promote arrhythmias in common structural heart diseases and to develop novel gene-based approaches to prevent these malignant arrhythmias.

Marine Cacheux is an Associate Research Scientist whose research has been focused on investigating the mechanisms underlying cardiac and skeletal muscle physiology and pathophysiology. Specifically, her work is dedicated to the study of ion channels and calcium cycling proteins in striated muscle in different pathological contexts. A key interest has been to investigate mechanisms underlying excitation-Contraction Coupling in health and disease, with a focus on the genes and proteins that are directly involved in the handling of intracellular calcium fluxes. Marine has also been interested in the role of calcium signaling in the regulation of cardiac electrophysiological properties and arrhythmias. Her current research is focused on understanding the structural and arrhythmic mechanisms underlying the development of heart failure and sudden cardiac death in the context of a multitude of acquired and inherited conditions. She has extensive expertise in the use of human and mouse primary cells as well as in vivo mouse models mimicking various muscle diseases to study the pathological consequences of gene mutations and altered protein function.

I grew up in Bronxville, NY and headed south to North Carolina for college. I graduated from Duke University in 2017 with a degree in biomedical engineering (biomechanics and bioelectricity concentrations) and a minor in music. As an undergraduate, I did research in cellular mechanobiology. After graduating, I stayed at Duke and worked in molecular cardiology in Howard Rockman's lab, investigating G-protein coupled receptor biophysics in the heart. Currently, I am a graduate student in Professor Stuart Campbell's lab, where I am studying arrhythmias using iPSC-derived engineered heart tissues. Outside of science, I play the piano (mostly classical, a bit of jazz and musical theater), compose, and enjoy road biking.