Babak Nazer, MD, is a Professor of Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of Washington, where he serves as the Director of the Multi-Disciplinary Ventricular Arrhythmia Program, and run the Translational Electrophysiology Laboratory. He obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, graduated from Harvard Medical School, trained in Internal Medicine at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and both Cardiovascular Diseases and Cardiac Electrophysiology at University of California San Francisco. 

Dr. Nazer’s clinical expertise within electrophysiology is in catheter ablation, ventricular arrhythmias and inflammatory and genetic cardiomyopathies. Clinically he collaborates with many other groups within UW to provide convenient and comprehensive care to patients referred from UW’s broad referral area with straight-forward and complex conditions as part of the Multi-Disciplinary Ventricular Arrhythmia Program which he Directs. This includes a robust collaboration with UW Psychology to provide patients who have significant psychosocial symptoms associated their arrhythmias necessary cardiac-focused psychology care as part of the UW Program for Cardiac Resilience.

His research laboratory has several broad focuses which have received funding from National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association and American Society of Echocardiography:

1. Development of novel therapeutic ultrasound devices for cardiovascular applications which include ventricular tachycardia, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and peripheral arterial disease. His laboratory is proudly part of UW’s Center for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound, where Dr. Nazer and his engineering team innovate, build, test, and aim to commercialize new medical devices.

    

2. Clinical overlap between inflammatory and genetic cardiomyopathies. This study aims to define new pathophysiologic links between (and diagnostic tests for) two growing groups of heart disease patients. Dr. Nazer leads a team of clinical and basic researchers spanning the entire bench-to-bedside continuum, collaborating with UW Medical Genetics, Nuclear Medicine and Mitochondria & Metabolism Center. 

    

3. Risk stratification and treatments for ventricular arrhythmias in adults with congenital heart disease (ACHD). Dr. Nazer collaborates with UW’s ACHD section, as well as UW Bioengineering colleagues to develop new methods of predicting and treating lethal arrhythmias using a combination of clinical research, cardiac simulations, machine learning and novel ablation approaches. 

By way of his research, Dr. Nazer has mentored > 50 trainees, published over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, spun out two start-up companies, and earned over $10M in extramural funding and 9 patents for his laboratory’s innovations.