Dr Zakariye Ashkir, cardiology trainee and RDM DPhil student, has won the CMR 2024 Early Career Award in the Translational Research category for his British Heart Foundation-funded work titled Bridging the gap between ECG indicators of arrhythmic risk and microstructure across hypertrophic cardiomyopathy stages.
CMR 2024, jointly held by the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging and the European Society of Cardiovascular Radiology, was the largest cardiac magnetic resonance conference to date. It was held in London on 25–27 January with more than 3,000 attendees from across the world.
Dr Ashkir competed against five other international researchers for the Award. His work explored the links between electrocardiographic (ECG) markers associated with sudden cardiac death and heart microstructure using a novel technique called ‘diffusion tensor cardiac magnetic resonance’ (DT-CMR) in early hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). HCM is the most common inherited heart muscle disorder and a leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the young.
On receiving the Award, he comments:
Winning the CMR 2024 Early Career Award is a tremendous honour. I am grateful for the fantastic supervision, collaboration and teamwork at OCMR that have made this achievement possible. We aim to build on this work to improve patient care and clinical outcomes in HCM.
Dr Ashkir's supervisors are Betty Raman, Stefan Neubauer, Masliza Mahmod and Hugh Watkins.