Hannah Valantine, MD, FRCP, MBBS

Hannah Valantine, MD, FRCP, MBBS, a longstanding member of the ISHLT, was presented with the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award on April 28, 2022 at the ISHLT 42^nd Annual Meeting & Scientific Sessions in Boston, MA USA.

Dr. Valantine received her MBBS from London University, completed her cardiology fellowship at Stanford, and earned her Doctor of Medicine from London University. She has worked in the field of transplantation for over 35 years, initially working as a laboratory researcher and mentee of Dr. Norman Shumway at Stanford University, where she would later join the faculty and rise to the rank of Professor of Medicine. She recently served as a tenured senior investigator at the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute intramural research program. Dr. Valantine has more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, multiple patents, and sustained NIH funding. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020.

Dr. Valantine has generated novel insights into the mechanisms involved in the development of cardiac allograft vasculopathy, the impact of cytomegalovirus infection on allograft health and disease, and the development of non-invasive assays for monitoring graft health. These major contributions have led to enhanced understanding of the mechanisms of post-transplant complications and have informed new treatment modalities that have improved length and quality of life after heart transplantation. Dr. Valantine also led the first-ever study of donor-derived cell-free DNA (ddcfDNA) for diagnosis of acute rejection. More recently, she led the Genomic Research Alliance for Transplantation (GRAfT), which has validated this work in both heart and lung transplant patients in a multicenter prospective cohort study, which began in 2015.

Finally, Dr. Valantine has been a leader in scientific equity, diversity, and inclusion over the course of her career. At Stanford, she was Senior Associate Dean for Leadership and Diversity, and ran programs to increase diversity and inclusion, as well as leadership training workshops for female and minority faculty. She was appointed as Chief of Scientific Workforce Diversity for the Director at the National Institutes of Health, and in this capacity, established a series of innovative national programs and policies aimed at increasing the representation of women and minorities in science across the United States. She is now recognized as a leader, innovator, and driver of change in the movement to achieve equity, diversity, and inclusion in medicine.