Professor Steffen Petersen was appointed as Director of the British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre (interim), following Professor Cathie Sudlow stepping down from her roles as Chief Scientist of HDR UK and Director of the BHF DSC at the end of July 2024. Steffen has held the role of Deputy Director of the BHF DSC since July 2023.

The British Heart Foundation Data Science Centre aims to enable data-led research to improve heart and circulatory health. Steffen works closely with the Centre’s Operations Director, the Associate Directors and the wider team to lead on the strategic delivery of the transformation of cardiovascular data science in the UK.

Steffen is a Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at William Harvey Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London and a Consultant Cardiologist at Barts Heart Centre, Barts Health NHS Trust. He is also the Cardiovascular Programme Director of UCLPartners Academic Medical Centre, President of the European Society of Cardiology’s (ESC) European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI) and the academic Training Programme Director for medical specialities in London.

He holds an MBCHB and MDRES equivalent (Dr med.) from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany, a DPHIL (OXON) from the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, an MPH from Harvard School of Public Health, and an MSc from the London School of Economics. He is also level 3 certified for cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). Steffen has been actively involved in cardiovascular magnetic resonance since 1998 and he reports over one thousand cardiac adult MRI scans each year.

His research interests include clinical trials using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), cost-effectiveness analysis related to cardiac imaging and primary prevention, large scale population-based studies using CMR including AI approaches (UK Biobank cardiac imaging lead) and electronic health record research that incorporates cardiac imaging data.