Founders & Leadership
Kalyanam Shivkumar, MD, PhD
Founder, Amara Yad · Series Editor, Anatomical Basis of Cardiac Interventions
Dr. Kalyanam Shivkumar a physician-scientist specializing in interventional cardiac electrophysiology, he is the inaugural chief of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center & EP Programs, which he established in 2002. He also founded the UCLA Neurocardiology Research Program of Excellence in 2014, and he serves as director and chief of the UCLA Cardiovascular and Interventional Programs for the health system.
Deeply troubled that physicians still relied on an atlas made from the bodies of Nazi victims, Dr. Shivkumar launched Amara Yad to replace it with ethically sourced, open-access atlases. He co-authored Volume 1, the Atlas of Cardiac Anatomy, and Volume 2, the Atlas of Interventional Electrophysiology. He also leads the project’s growing international collaboration.
His research on the autonomic nervous system and heart rhythm disorders has been funded by the NIH continuously since 2006. He oversees a 15-university NIH consortium on the neural control of the heart. He was named Editor-in-Chief of JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology in 2020 and served as President of the International Society of Autonomic Neuroscience in 2019. He is an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London) and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians.
Barbara J. Natterson-Horowitz, MD
Co-founder, Amara Yad
Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz co-founded the Amara Yad Project with Dr. Shivkumar. She is a cardiologist and evolutionary biologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, Harvard University’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, and the UCLA School of Medicine. Her work develops bio-inspired strategies for understanding and addressing human health challenges. A leader in evolutionary medicine, she chairs the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Animal Health Sciences, Conservation, and Research (BAHSCR). She is also a past president of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health.
She leads a medical phylogenomics lab that develops computational methods for finding insights for human health in the natural world. By studying a diverse range of animals in natural settings, she has uncovered evolved adaptations relevant to heart failure, sudden cardiac death, seizures, dementia, movement disorders, infertility and psychiatric conditions, including anxiety, compulsive and eating disorders. Her recent research focuses on the origins of cardiovascular sex differences, atherogenesis and ventricular arrhythmias.
Dr. Natterson-Horowitz is also an award-winning author. Zoobiquity was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Excellence in Science Books. Wildhood was named the 2021 Book of the Year by the Association of Science Education and a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Pick.
Faculty & Collaborators
Shumpei Mori, MD PhD
Co-author, Anatomical Basis of Cardiac Interventions, Volumes 1–4
Dr. Shumpei Mori is co-author of every volume in the Amara Yad atlas series, and he has taken more than 50,000 original photographs of ethically donated human hearts for the project. He plays a key role in its image preparation. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Division of Cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he joined Dr. Shivkumar’s laboratory in 2019.
Dr. Mori began his career as an invasive cardiologist in Japan. He turned to cardiac anatomy after seeing how gaps in anatomical knowledge limited interventional procedures, and he earned his PhD at Kobe University in 2016. His work combines cadaveric dissection, high-resolution photography, photogrammetry, stereography, 3D reconstruction and 3D printing. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers. He serves as an editor of Clinical Anatomy, International Associate Editor of the Journal of Cardiology, and Section Editor of JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology.
Roderick Tung, MD
Dr. Roderick Tung is co-author of the Atlas of Interventional Electrophysiology, the second volume in the Amara Yad series, which applies precise cardiac anatomy to the treatment of heart rhythm disorders. He is division chief of Cardiology and director of Cardiovascular Clinical Research at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, Phoenix. He also directs the Cardiovascular Center at Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix.
He previously served as director of Cardiac Electrophysiology at the University of Chicago and as a professor of Medicine at the Pritzker School of Medicine, where he built a program with a global reputation for clinical and academic advances. Dr. Tung earned his MD at Northwestern University. He trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in cardiology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and in cardiac electrophysiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. He is board-certified in cardiovascular disease and clinical cardiac electrophysiology.
David Paterson, MA D.Phil, MSc D.Sc Hon D.Univ
University of Oxford
Professor David Paterson is Amara Yad’s collaborator at the University of Oxford, one of the partner institutions helping build the project into a multi-university, global effort. He heads Oxford’s Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, a post he has held since 2016. In 2023, he became the European lead of the Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence with UCLA on Bioelectronics for Neurocardiology.
Professor Paterson earned his DPhil at Oxford in 1989 and became Professor of Physiology there in 2002. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Associate Head and then Deputy Head (Vice Dean) of Oxford’s Division of Medical Sciences. He was Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Physiology from 2011 to 2016 and President of The Physiological Society from 2020. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Western Australia (2023) and the University of Otago (2025).
Olujimi Ajijola, MD PhD
UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center
Dr. Olujimi Ajijola directs the Neurocardiology Research Program of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center. His research on how the nervous system controls the heart connects closely to Amara Yad’s planned volumes on neuroanatomy and the peripheral nervous system. He is a Professor of Medicine, a practicing interventional cardiac electrophysiologist, and Director of the Medical Scientist Training Program at UCLA.
Dr. Ajijola earned his medical degree at Duke University and his PhD in Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology at UCLA. He trained at Massachusetts General Hospital and UCLA. His honors include the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Jeremiah Stamler Award, and a Young Physician-Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and he is known for outstanding teaching and mentorship.
Michael Fishbein, MD
Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. Michael Fishbein is a cardiovascular pathologist whose long career studying the human heart at the tissue level supports the anatomical accuracy at the core of Amara Yad. He is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, where he previously held the Distinguished Piansky Professorship.
Dr. Fishbein earned his BS and MD at the University of Illinois. He completed his residency in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, followed by fellowships in pathology at Bispebjerg Hospital, in oncology at UCSF Mount Zion, and in cardiology at Mayo Clinic. He has also served at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is board-certified in Anatomic and Clinical Pathology.
Gregory Fishbein, MD
Professor of Anatomic Pathology; Chief of Cardiovascular & Pulmonary Pathology and Chief of Autopsy Pathology, UCLA Health
Dr. Gregory Fishbein brings expertise in cardiovascular and autopsy pathology to Amara Yad as the project works toward atlases covering the whole human body. At UCLA Health, he is Professor of Anatomic Pathology, Chief of Cardiovascular & Pulmonary Pathology, and Chief of Autopsy Pathology. He specializes in cardiovascular pathology and diseases of the lung, pleura and thymus. He earned his medical degree at UCLA and completed his residency in Pathology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
John A. Belperio, MD
Chief, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep Medicine, Clinical Immunology and Allergy, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Dr. John Belperio brings pulmonary and critical care leadership to Amara Yad as the project extends beyond the heart toward a complete atlas of human anatomy. He is Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep Medicine, Clinical Immunology and Allergy at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
His research examines how chemokines and cytokines drive lung transplant rejection, interstitial lung diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and sarcoidosis, and obstructive lung disease, including COPD and bronchiectasis. Dr. Belperio earned a BS in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University and his MD at Temple University. He completed his residency at the University of Maryland and his fellowship in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Michigan.
Operations
Amiksha Gandhi
Chief Operating Officer
Amiksha Gandhi serves as Chief Operating Officer of the Amara Yad Project, where she oversees day-to-day operations and keeps the initiative’s many moving parts working together. She draws on her background in research and operations management at UCLA to coordinate across the project’s physicians, scientists and partners, so the team can stay focused on its mission.
Amiksha is deeply committed to Amara Yad’s mission. She considers it a privilege to work alongside such brilliant minds, and she is passionate about helping turn their vision into a lasting impact on medicine worldwide.
In Memoriam
Wallace A. McAlpine, MD
Dr. McAlpine’s pioneering photographic studies of the human heart, and his collection of more than 4,000 historical slides now preserved at UCLA, form a cornerstone of the Amara Yad atlases. His methods continue to guide our work.
Amara Yad — The Immortal Hand
A physician-led initiative of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.