Professor Eylem Levelt

Profile

• Professor of Cardiology
• Wellcome Trust Clinical Career Development Fellow
• Honorary Consultant Cardiologist

I am an academic cardiologist with a special interest in cardiac metabolism and advanced cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging techniques including spectroscopy, perfusion imaging, oxygen-sensitive imaging and adipose tissue imaging. My research focuses on testing novel treatment strategies by monitoring the heart’s response to treatment using imaging biomarkers for guiding clinical treatment in patients with type 2 diabetes and patients with common cardiovascular conditions including inherited cardiac diseases or valve diseases who have type 2 diabetes comorbidity. The medium and long-term goals of my program of research are to emphasise diabetes comorbidity among the risk stratification and treatment strategies in cohorts of patients with inherited cardiac disease and surgical valve disease to improve prognostic accuracy of risk scores, to facilitate targeted therapeutic approaches and consequently improve clinical outcomes.

In addition, I have a long-standing interest in promoting early detection and prevention of cardiovascular diseases in young women to address substantial gender difference in the prevalence and burden of cardiovascular disease. Consequently, I have set up a pioneering prospective case-control cardiometabolic imaging study in collaboration with Prof. Eleanor Scott and Dr Thomas Everett to address the substantial void in the current understanding of the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in women with obstetric complications including those with preeclampsia and gestational diabetes. With this project, we have shown that advanced cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging techniques are well-tolerated in pregnancy and may play a significant role in assessing myocardial involvement in women at risk of perinatal complications. The goals of this program of research are to make a step change in how we treat women with obstetric complications, to tackle the issue of disparities in the cardiovascular health care women receive.

I have been awarded Wellcome Trust Clinical Career Development Fellowship. During my DPhil training at the University of Oxford, I received rigorous training in MR techniques and produced a portfolio of research involving CMR, Proton (1H) and 31Phosphorus-MR Spectroscopy, as well as cardiac metabolism. I am elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology and awarded an ESC educational grant from the European Heart Academy as a future leader in Cardiology for the MSc in Clinical Trials at the University of Oxford. I have instigated multiple research studies as principal investigator, and successfully obtained substantial research grant income from multiple grant bodies including the Wellcome Trust, Diabetes UK, the British Heart Foundation, Health Education England and the Medical Research Council as a primary applicant. I have received formal recognition of professionalism in teaching as Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I encourage my PhD students to present their work at international and national scientific meetings and my PhD students have been awarded multiple national and international prizes including prestigious award of the SCMR Young Investigator Award, Early Career Melvin Judkins Award at the at American Heart Association Scientific Meeting, and the British Cardiovascular Society Highest Ranking Imaging Award. 

Qualifications

• DPhil (University of Oxford)

Professional memberships

• MRCP (London)
• Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Research groups and institutes

• Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine
• Biomedical Imaging Science
• Multidisciplinary Cardiovascular Research Centre