Michelle A. Albert is a Professor in Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) and director of the CeNter for the StUdy of AdveRsiTy and CardiovascUlaR DiseasE (NURTURE Research Center). She was the Vivian Beaumont Allen Endowed Professor/Chair and Chief of Cardiology at Howard University. Albert is a graduate of Haverford College, University of Rochester School of Medicine, Harvard School of Public Health, and completed Internal Medicine Residency and was also Chief Resident in Medicine at Columbia University. Dr. Albert then completed Cardiovascular Clinical and Research Fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she rose in the ranks to an Associate Professor in Medicine.
Her clinical expertise involves taking care of the most critically ill advanced heart disease patients, and preventive cardiology with a focus on vulnerable populations. From a research perspective, her research has followed a non-traditional, but bold path for cardiovascular disease (CVD) research -- first characterizing the predictive capability of novel inflammatory and thrombotic biomarkers of CVD risk at the population level, to identifying how noted relationships vary by important social and demographic characteristics, and now to defining the mechanisms of differential cardiovascular disease risk across the life-course in children, older populations, women and racial/ethnic minorities exposed to adversity, i.e “the biology of adversity”.
She was Vice-President and Board Member of the Association of Black Cardiologists (ABC), a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Qualification of Biomarkers and Surrogate Endpoints in Chronic Disease and serves as a reviewer for multiple journals including currently as Associate Editor at Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis & Vascular Biology (ATVB), a member of the Editorial Board of Circulation and as Section Editor for Current Cardiovascular Risk Reports. Dr Albert is also a member of the Association of University Cardiologists. She served/s on several national committees of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and American Heart Association (AHA) including as a member of the Epidemiology Council, the AHA National Research Committee, Executive Committee-Clinical Cardiology Council, SACC, AHA Executive Database Steering Committee (Chair), Sarnoff Foundation Scientific Board and is a current Board Member and is President-Elect, AHA San Francisco/Bay Area Board.
A recipient of multiple research awards, including multi-million dollar R01 funding from the NIH and funding from RWJ, Kellogg and Doris Duke Foundations, Dr. Albert enjoys mentoring trainees at all levels across the United States and was nominated for the competitive 2011-2012 Excellence in Mentoring Award at Harvard Medical School. She is a recipient of Woman’s Day Magazine’s Red Dress Award (2014), received the Haverford College Alumni Award (2015) and is the recipient of the 2016 Women in Cardiology Mentoring Award from the AHA. She is one of two recipients of the prestigious 2018 AHA Merit award for visionary research.