Dr. Black is a board-certified nephrologist with nearly three decades of experience in preventive cardiology. Dr. Black received his training at Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

He is an internationally known expert on hypertension, with special interests in the evaluation of antihypertensive medications, the study of secondary causes of hypertension and hypertension in the elderly.

Dr. Black was on the Executive Committee of the seventh Joint National Committee on the Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of Hypertension (JNC VII) and served on the Executive Committee of the American Heart Association Council on High Blood Pressure Research, and has been chairman of the Council's Professional Education Committee. He also was a member of the Executive Committee of the American Society of Hypertension, and chaired the Society's Postgraduate Education Committee.

Before coming to Rush in 1992, Dr. Black was a professor of internal medicine at Yale University and director of the Hypertension and Preventive Cardiology Service at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He has participated in the development of more than two dozen antihypertensive medications and was the principal investigator of the Systolic Hypertension in the Elderly Program at Yale.

He has written extensively on secondary causes of hypertension, such as renovascular hypertension and pheochromocytoma, and the evaluation and management of hypertensive patients. Dr. Black is frequently invited to speak throughout the United States and abroad. He is a key opinion-leader in preventive cardiology and hypertension, and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Hypertension and the Journal of Human Hypertension.

Dr. Cohn was instrumental in developing the concept of vasodilator therapy for heart failure and has organized and chaired the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Study Program on vasodilator therapy of heart failure. Dr. Cohn was one of the first to advocate bedside hemodynamic monitoring in acutely ill individuals, was the first to identify the syndrome of right ventricular infarction, and was the first to identify vasodilator drugs as an effective therapy for acute and chronic heart failure.

He is the author of more than 500 scientific publications and has written extensively on circulatory physiology, hypertension, congestive heart failure and its treatment, nervous system control mechanisms in heart failure, and vascular compliance. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cardiac Failure and serves on the editorial boards of many of the major journals in the field. He is the editor of the textbook, Drug Treatment of Heart Failure, and co-editor of the cardiology text, Cardiovascular Medicine.

Dr. Cohn is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American College of Cardiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is a member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation as well as many other professional societies. He is president of the Heart Failure Society of America, is a past president of the International Society of Hypertension, is a past president of The American Society of Hypertension and has served as an officer of the American Heart Association and the American Federation for Clinical Research.

He served as chairman of the Cardiorenal Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration and has served on a number of government boards and committees. Dr. Cohn has presented numerous honorary lectures around the world and has served as visiting professor at many universities here and abroad. His innovative approaches to the management of cardiovascular diseases have led to several patents aimed at improving diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to heart failure and hypertension.

Professor Grossman graduated from the Medical School of Tel-Aviv University and then served as a physician in the Israeli army. After training in internal medicine and hypertension, he worked with Professor ED Frohlich and Professor FH Messerli at Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans on hemodynamic changes in hypertension. He also worked with Harry Keiser and David Goldstein at the National Institute of Health on the relationship between the sympathetic nervous system and hypertension.

Professor Grossman is the President of the Israeli Society of Hypertension, and is a recognized hypertension specialist of the European Society of Hypertension. He conducts multiple clinical studies and basic research in hypertension and is a member of the steering committee of the OPERA study. Professor Grossman serves as a consultant in hypertension to the two largest HMOs in Israel, Kupat Holim and Maacabi as well as on the editorial board of the Journal of Human Hypertension.

Dr. Izzo is one of the world's most prominent opinion leaders in hypertension and has published extensively in areas such as the mechanisms of hypertension and stress responses of blood pressure, the mechanisms of endothelial dysfunction and exaggerated vasoreactivity, cellular and physiologic control of sympathetic nerve activity, and arterial compliance and vascular biomechanics.

Dr. Izzo sits on the American Heart Association's Continuing Education Committee and on the editorial board of the American Journal of Hypertension (AJH) and the Journal of Clinical Hypertension (JCH).

Dr. Mancia served as President (1988-1990) and Secretary (1984-1988) of the International Society of Hypertensionds (ISH). He has also served as President of the European Society of Clinical Investigation (1980-1982), President of the Italian Society of Hypertension (1997-1999) and is past President of the European Society of Hypertension (ESH), and member 'ex officio' of the Executive Scientific Council of the American Society of Hypertension.

He has been or is member of the Editorial Board of more than 30 international journals on cardiology, hypertension and internal medicine for which he has edited more than 60 special issues or supplements, and he has been chief or associate editor of various international hypertension journals and is at present deputy editor of the Journal of Hypertension.

Dr. Mancia's research interests are pathophysiology, diagnosis and therapy of hypertension, heart failure, coronary and other cardiovascular diseases. His expertise includes ambulatory blood pressure monitoring, neural control of the circulation, large artery mechanics and clinical trials. He has given lectures at over 150 international meetings and has edited several books on hypertension and has published more than 700 original papers, reviews and editorials in peer-reviewed journals and books.

Dr. Weber is a Fellow of the Council for High Blood Pressure Research of the American Heart Association, the American College of Cardiology, and the American College of Clinical Pharmacology. He is the immediate past president of the American Society of Hypertension and an editor of the American Journal of Hypertension. He currently serves as a consultant to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research of the FDA.

He is an editor or a member of the editorial board of more than a dozen peer-reviewed publications, including: American Journal of Hypertension, American Journal of Geriatric Cardiology, Congestive Heart Failure, Current Hypertension Reports, Hypertension, American Journal of Hypertension, Blood Pressure, Journal of Hypertension, and American Heart Journal.

Dr. Weber received his medical degree from Sydney University in Australia. He trained as an intern in Sydney, and as a medical resident and Fellow in Nephrology at New York University Medical Center. Dr. Weber has published more than 300 articles, books and chapters in the most prestigious peer-reviewed medical journals, often as lead clinical investigator.