Ahmed Tawakol, MD

Dr. Tawakol is a cardiologist with a clinical and research focus on cardiovascular imaging. He obtained his medical degree from Stanford Medical School, then trained at Brigham and Women’s Hospital for Internal Medicine, Cardiology, and MGH for Nuclear Cardiology. He is the Director of Nuclear Cardiology and Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center at the MGH. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Tawakol pioneered PET/CT methods for imaging atherosclerotic plaques; his group developed and validated molecular imaging tools to assess atherosclerotic plaque inflammation in humans. Using that approach, his group is assessing several novel treatments directed against atherosclerotic inflammation in humans and is studying disease mechanisms that trigger cardiovascular disease events. Notably, Dr Tawakol’s research includes a focus on multi-organ mechanisms by which stress and depression cause cardiovascular diseases. His team provided the first-in-human observation linking stress-associated neural activity to subsequent CVD events, thus providing mechanistic insights into how psychosocial stress promotes CVD. He is the principal investigator on multiple studies funded by the NIH, industrial sponsors, and foundations.

Research Areas
Cardiac Physiology and Disease
Cardiovascular Bioengineering and Biomedical Imaging
Chemical Biology and Therapeutics

Publications
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