Image: Mario J. Garcia, MDAfter a broad and comprehensive national search, Mario J. Garcia, MD will begin as Chief of the Montefiore Einstein Division of Cardiology effective Thursday, April 1st. Dr. Garcia will also hold the Pauline Levitt Endowed Chair in Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, will be Professor of Radiology, and will be Co-Director (with Dr. Robert Michler) of the Montefiore Einstein Heart Center.
Dr. Garcia was formerly Professor of Medicine and Radiology and Director of Cardiovascular Imaging at the Mount Sinai Medical Center's Cardiovascular Institute (New York, NY).
Dr. Garcia was born in Argentina and moved to the Dominican Republic when he was four years old. He attended Universidad Nacional Pedro Henriquez Urena in Santo Domingo, where he earned both his bachelor’s degree in premedical sciences and his doctorate in medicine, completing his formal education in 1986. Following training as an internal medicine resident and then a cardiology fellow at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, Connecticut, he pursued additional training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Cardiac Nuclear Imaging and at the Cleveland Clinic in Advanced Cardiac Imaging.
After two years as an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth, Dr. Garcia was recruited to the Cleveland Clinic by Eric Topol. He was initially a staff cardiologist, but quickly became Director of Echocardiography in 2000, a position he held for the next five years. Under his tenure, the echocardiography program doubled in size to become the second largest program in the United States (behind the Mayo Clinic). Dr. Garcia was actively involved in recruiting new physicians to the program and managing the program’s budget. He also became involved in several entrepreneurial ventures, and brought CT angiography to the Cleveland Clinic. In 2005, he was named Director of Cardiovascular Imaging, leading the Cleveland Clinic to the top of Cardiovascular Imaging in the country at the time. In 2006, he was recruited to Mount Sinai as Professor of Medicine and Radiology, overseeing the cardiology imaging program. There, he once again led successful expansion, developing a strong collaborative relationship with the Department of Radiology, a critical factor in his success.
Academically, Dr. Garcia is an active member of the Boards of Directors of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology, of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography, and of the Intersocietal Accreditation Council, and he is a past member of the Board of the American Society of Echocardiography. He is a member of the American Heart Association, Circulation Council; a member of the Editorial Board, JACC-Imaging; the Associate Editor, American Heart Association on-line; the Editor of The Heart.org, Imaging section; and the Editor of The Heart.org (Spanish). He is the winner of the Feigenbaum Award of the American Society of Echocardiography (2004); the Inge Edler Award, Madrid, Spain (2001); the Teaching Attending of the year award, Cleveland Clinic Foundation (1998); the David H. Jacobs Research Award of the American Heart Association, Northeast Ohio Affiliate (1997); and the Facultad Universitaria Dominicana Year Award.
Dr. Garcia is the author or co-author of four books, including the very recent single-author definitive text, NonInvasive Cardiovascular Imaging: A Multimodality Approach (Garcia, MJ, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010). He has also written multiple book chapters and over 160 papers on many aspects of cardiac imaging.
Dr. Garcia's work has been supported by extramural funding from the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DOD), the American Society of Echocardiography, the NIH, the American Heart Association, and SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals.
Dr. Garcia is an active practitioner, having practiced primary care Cardiology one day per week in the Dominican community of northern Manhattan. He plans to read echocardiograms at Montefiore on Thursday, his first day on the job.
He lives in Scarsdale with his wife and two daughters.
"The recruitment of Dr. Garcia, a national leader in cardiology, will elevate cardiovascular care at Montefiore, and is an important step in meeting the goals of the our Strategic Plan," said Dr. Victor Schuster, Chairman of the Montefiore Einstein Department of Medicine. "We are delighted to welcome Dr. Garcia to our faculty, the Division, the Department, and the Montefiore and Einstein communities."