DCRI Faculty Member Wins Linnemeier Award
By Mike Upchurch

Dr. David Kandzari has been honored with the first Thomas J. Linnemeier Spirit of Interventional Cardiology Young Investigator Award. Presented at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual conference on September 19, the award recognizes outstanding achievement and promise as a research fellow in interventional cardiology clinical research.

Gregg Stone, MD, vice chairman of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, presented the award in the presence of the late Dr. Linnemeier’s mother, wife, and 2 daughters.

"Tom was a teacher to many of us, a mentor, a friend, and an inspiration. He liked to consider himself just an angioplasty doc, but he was also a teacher, and an incredibly-with undoubted integrity—straightforward and down-to-earth thinker," said Dr. Stone. "But most importantly, he was a tremendously caring person and physician, and for these reasons we’ve created this award in his name."

Dr. Linnemeier, who died in May 2002 in a car accident, was chief of the Indiana Heart Institute until 2000, when he became the chief medical officer for Guidant, Inc., a leading manufacturer of medical devices and cosponsor of the TCT meeting. In addition to these duties, he codirected the Cardiovascular Research Foundation’s Interventional Cardiology Fellows course and was a professor of medicine at Stanford University.

“Tom Linnemeier was a visionary cardiologist whom I knew and greatly respected, so to be a recipient of an award named after him is very special to me,” said Kandzari. “Being recognized at the largest interventional [cardiology] meeting is a great honor.”

After earning his medical degree at Duke and completing his residency at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Kandzari joined the DCRI as a fellow in 1998. In 2002, he became a member of the faculty and was soon named the John B. Simpson Assistant Professor of Interventional Cardiology and Genomic Sciences. He is also the Director of Duke University Medical Center’s Peripheral Vascular Program and Director of Interventional Cardiology Research in the division of cardiology. Since arriving at the DCRI, he has helped lead several innovative trials, including MEND-1 and LOWTEMP.

Dr. Kandzari was 1 of 3 finalists for the Linnemeier Award, out of more than 50 international applicants. Only current fellows or recent graduates from fellowship programs in interventional cardiology and endovascular medicine were eligible.

"All 3 finalists are winners in our minds," said Dr. Stone. "It was incredibly difficult to choose among these 3 people. All 3 have already had academic careers that most of us could be proud of."

Dr. Stone described the letters of recommendation written for Dr. Kandzari by DCRI leaders such as Drs. Rob Califf, Pascal Goldschmidt, Bob Harrington, Jimmy Tcheng, Jim Zidar and others as “glowing.”

The DCRI congratulates Dr. Kandzari on this admirable and well deserved achievement.