2023 STAR Alumni Professional Achievement Award - Joseph C. Wu, MD, PhD
Joseph Wu, MD, PhD
Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor and Professor of Radiology
Director, Stanford Cardiovascular Institute
About Dr. Wu
Dr. Joseph Wu is a board-certified cardiologist. He is the Director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine and Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine.
The American Heart Association appointed Dr. Wu as its president for 2023-2024.
His clinical interests include adult congenital heart disease and cardiovascular imaging. He strives to help each patient achieve the best possible heart health and quality of life.
To advance heart care, Dr. Wu conducts extensive research, focusing on clinical genomics, stem cells, and drug development. The goals of his research are to enhance our understanding of cardiovascular diseases, accelerate the discovery of new drug treatments, and ensure that every cardiovascular patient will benefit from the best of personalized precision medicine.
Dr. Wu has published more than 550 manuscripts with an H-index of 124, and is one of the world’s most highly cited scholars in the field of cardiovascular medicine, stem cells, genomics, and precision medicine. His work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Nature, Cell, Science, Nature Medicine, Science Translational Medicine, Cell Stem Cell, PNAS, Circulation, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, European Heart Journal, and many more. Dr. Wu also educates the heart specialists of the future. More than 45 of his trainees are now principal investigators of clinical or research studies in major academic centers both in the US and internationally.
He has earned numerous honors, including the Distinguished Scientist Award from the American Heart Association and the Director’s New Innovator Award and Transformative Award from the National Institutes of Health. He also received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House Office of Technology.
Dr. Wu is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), National Academy of Inventors (NAI), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), Association of American Physicians (AAP), Academia Sinica (Taiwan), Association of University Cardiologists (AUC), and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). He is an honorary lifetime member of the Society of Toxicology (SOT).
During the award ceremony, Dr. Wu shared the following advice to STAR trainees:
"No other institute has this type of program which allows trainees to pursue their dream. It allowed me to pursue the dream. I experienced imposter syndrome as a fellow and the STAR Program gave me confidence. Confidence that you can do it like anyone else. Talk to your mentors, colleagues. The sky is the limit and anyone can become successful."