Skip to Main Content

AHA Announces 2021 Early Career Investigator Award Finalists

August 20, 2021
by Elisabeth Reitman

Evangelos (Evan) Oikonomou, MD, DPhil, has been selected as a finalist for the Robert Levy Memorial Lecture and Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Early Career Investigator Award Competition. Oikonomou is a fellow in the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine, a member of the ABIM Physician-Scientist Research Pathway at the Yale School of Medicine, and the Cardiovascular Data Science (CarDS) Lab.

In a project led by Oikonomou and Rohan Khera, MD, MS, the CarDS Lab recently developed a novel approach of constructing computational clinical trial phenomaps to characterize patient-level heterogeneity in the effectiveness of medical therapies and interventions. This method has already led to the development of a novel digital decision-aid tool for physicians called ASSIST, which aims to standardize the selection of the most appropriate test for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD).

Building on this work, the team has now expanded the application of this method to landmark trials exploring the benefits of intensive versus standard blood pressure reduction. Oikonomou will discuss the full results of the study in the abstract, “Individualizing the Cardiovascular Benefits of Intensive Blood Pressure Reduction Using Computational Phenomaps of the SPRINT and ACCORD Trials” which will be presented on November 14, 2021 at the American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions.

Sponsored by the Council on Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health, the Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Early Career Investigator Award honors the memory of Robert I. Levy, MD ’61, who directed early clinical trials that established the link between blood pressure reduction and the prevention of CAD.

For more late-breaking research from Khera and Oikonomou at the 2021 Scientific Session, please visit cardiology.yale.edu.