Dr. Robert Kormos is the Divisional Vice President of Global Medical Affairs for Heart Failure at Abbott. He is also a Professor Emeritus of Cardiothoracic Surgery and Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh.
He is the recipient of multiple awards including the President’s Award at the 7th Annual Scientific Session of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation in 1987. He also received the American Heart Association of Pittsburgh Peter J Safar “Pulse of Pittsburgh” Achievement Award in 2016 and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Thoracic Surgeons in 2020.
Having participated in more than 18 professional societies, he has served in several leadership roles including President of the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation from 1999-2000 and Deputy Director for the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the past director of UPMC’s Artificial Heart and Heart Transplant Program, a position he held for 25 years. He has held the Brack G. Hattler Chair of Cardiothoracic Transplantation since 2014 and is a Fellow of the American Heart Association. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Mechanical Circulatory Support group for the Association for the Advancement of the Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) and on the Medicare Evidence Development Committee (MEDCAC).
Dr. Kormos is internationally regarded for his work in organ transplantation and the use of cardiac assist devices as temporary or permanent support for patients with end-stage heart disease. He was a co-principle investigator of the NHLBI RFP in 1995 for the development of the HeartMate II LVAD and performed the first-in-human implant in Israel in July 2000. He was the co-principal investigator on the NHLBI contract entitled, “Interagency Registry of Mechanical Circulatory Support for End Stage Heart Failure (INTERMACS)” and was the Chair of the STS Taskforce on INTERMACS. He was the founding member in 2002 of the STS Workforce on End-Stage Cardiopulmonary Disease. As an authority on mechanical circulatory support, he has contributed to over 350 published articles, 330 plus proceedings papers, 40 book chapters, and a textbook.
His research interests also include: Biosensor diagnostic detectors for congestive heart failure, biomarkers in traumatic brain injury, and machine learning for analytics of large clinical data sets. Additionally, he has generated industry and federally funded research grants totaling over 8 million dollars focused on MCS technology and its clinical implementation including myocardial recovery and developed a Biosensor Consortium with University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University.
