Zahi A. Fayad, PhD
Director, Translational and Molecular Imaging Institute
Lucy G. Moses Professorship in Medical Imaging and Bioengineering
Vice Chair for Research and Professor, Department of Radiology
Professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
“In research and in discovery, not every day is perfect, and if you don’t have that love, and you don’t have that perseverance, you will be a casual scientist,” says Zahi A. Fayad, PhD, one of nine accomplished physicians and researchers who received the 2019 Jacobi Medallion—one of Mount Sinai’s highest awards. “I’m not interested in casual science. I’m interested in real science.”
Dr. Fayad’s interdisciplinary research is dedicated to the detection and prevention of cardiovascular disease with seminal contributions in the field of multimodality biomedical imaging and nanomedicine.
“He has raised the profile of Mount Sinai very significantly in the field of imaging,” says Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief, The Mount Sinai Hospital; Director, Mount Sinai Heart; Director, Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute; and Richard Gorlin, MD/Heart Research Foundation Professor of Cardiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Most of it relates to the research that he has done, particularly of atherosclerosis disease, which is the number one killer today.”
Dr. Fayad has been a faculty member of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai since 1997. His work has recently expanded to understanding the effect of stress on the immune system and cardiovascular disease.
“In the past you would have to do what’s called exploratory surgery to figure out if somebody has a disease,” he says. “Now we image the person from head to toe. This revolution is embedded in every practice of medicine that that we do today.”
The author of more than 500 peer-reviewed publications, 50 book chapters, and 500 meeting presentations, Dr. Fayad is currently the principal investigator of numerous NIH grants, sub-contracts, and pharmaceutically funded clinical trials.
“I’m making connections, not only what’s going on from the cardiovascular system, but what’s the connection between the cardiovascular system, especially the immune system, and also what goes on in your brain,” he says. “We are now devising these new nanobiologics to treat the disease while we’re modulating the immune system, in a very precise manner, to try to cure diseases from cancer to transplant rejection to cardiovascular disease, and to a variety of autoimmune diseases.”
Dr. Fayad is the recipient of multiple prestigious awards and has trained over 100 postdoctoral fellows, clinical fellows, and students.
“When you’re doing science, you’re doing research, you’re not doing it by yourself. There is a whole slew of people behind you,” he says. “Big discoveries are done with very strong collaborators, it is the best way of pushing things together. That, I think, is the story of Mount Sinai. This place is magical to me.”
“Mount Sinai is lucky to have Zahi because he’s a force of nature,” says Willem J. M. Mulder, PhD, Professor, Department of Radiology and Department of Oncological Sciences and Director, TMII’s Nanomedicine Program. “He pioneered the application of magnetic resonance imaging, and he pushes all kinds of new technologies to visualize that, to quantify that, in a way that you know has not been done previously.”
