Igor R. Efimov

Department of Biomedical Engineering

The George Washington University

Igor R. Efimov
Alisann & Terry Collins Professor

Professor Efimov is the Director of Cardiovascular Engineering Laboratory, an NIH-funded cardiovascular research and engineering laboratory, which focusses on the physiological mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and on development of novel therapies for heart diseases with emphasis on heart rhythm disorders. Professor Efimov served as an inaugural chairman of Biomedical Engineering Department at the George Washington University from January 2015 to December 2019. In 2008, Dr. Efimov founded Cardialen to develop low energy implantable electrotherapy of atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. Cardialen has raised $28M in venture funding and is conducting clinical trials.

Dr. Efimov earned his M.Sc. and PhD from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1986 and 1992, respectively, and completed his postdoctoral training at the University of Pittsburgh (1992-1994). He served on the faculty of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1994-2000) and Case Western Reserve University (2000-2004) in Cleveland, OH, and Washington University in St. Louis, MO (2004-2015), prior to joining the George Washington University in 2015 as the founding chairman of its new BME Department.

Dr. Efimov is Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, the Heart Rhythm Society, the American Heart Association, etc. He has received numerous awards including: RASA George Gamow Prize, Astor Visiting Fellowship at University of Oxford, Washington University Chancellor’s Hartwell Prize for Innovative Research, The Doris J.W. Escher Lectureship at Montefiore Medical Center of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Walter Lillehei Lectureship at University of Minnesota, Richard B. and Lynne V. Cheney Lectureship at the George Washington University, etc. Dr. Efimov held visiting or adjunct professorships at the University of Bordeaux, France; University of Nizhny Novgorod, Russia; and his alma mater Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia.

He has served as Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology and IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering. He has served on editorial boards of Scientific Reports, Circulation Research, Heart Rhythm Journal, Journal of Cardiovascular Electrophysiology, Journal of Molecular and Cellular Cardiology, and other premier cardiovascular and biomedical engineering professional journals. He has served as a chartered member of National Institutes of Health Electrical Signaling, Transporters and Arrhythmia (ESTA) Study Section and NHLBI Systems Biology Collaborations review group. He served on numerous expert panels of the World Bank, Canadian Academies, British Heart Foundation, Russian Ministry of Science and Education, the Royal Society of New Zeeland, Swiss National Science Foundation, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and other international funds and organizations.

Publications