Recently selected as the new president of the Association of University Cardiologists, Blase A. Carabello, M.D., Medical Care Line executive, is currently serving as Acting Chief of Staff of the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center.

Listed as one of the best doctors in the nation in the field of cardiovascular disease in 2007 by the medical knowledge company, Best Doctors, Inc., Carabello received his medical degree from Temple University in 1973 and completed his internal medicine residency and cardiology fellowship at Harvard Medical School in 1978.

A chairperson of the Program Committee of the Council on Clinical Cardiology and a member of the Committee on Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association, Carabello is the Moncrief Professor of Medicine and vice chairman in the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and a founding member and immediate past president of the Society for Heart Valve Disease. He also holds memberships in the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the American Federation for Clinical Research.

Since 2001, Carabello has served as a member of the Cardio/Renal Advisory Committee for the Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C. He is on the editorial board and serves as an editorial consultant of a number of peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, the Journal of Heart Valve Disease, Journal of Cardiac Failure, and Current Cardiology Reports.

Carabello is the author of more than 200 peer-reviewed and invited publications and the recipient of numerous awards for excellence in teaching. Most recently, he received the 2003 Alumnus of the Year Award from Temple University.