Dr. Richard W. Nesto is Chairman, Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Lahey Clinic Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Boston.  Previously, he was Co-Director of the Institute for Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.  Dr. Nesto’s major clinical and research interest involves heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus.  His contributions have lead to a wider appreciation that heart disease has unique features in diabetes and that treatment of coronary syndromes requires a specialized approach in these patients.  He is currently a principal investigator and/or steering committee member of many major international trials evaluating heart disease in diabetes including BARI-2D, FREEDOM, APPROACH, PERISCOPE, NAVIGATOR and INTENSIVE.  He practices interventional cardiology and his expertise in intracoronary imaging techniques has contributed to the characterization of the anatomic substrate underlying acute coronary syndromes.  He has authored or co-authored over 250 original scientific articles, reviews and abstracts and numerous book chapters.
 
Dr. Nesto is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, and American College of Chest Physicians, and a member of the American Diabetes Association and is Vice President of the International Society of Diabetes and Vascular Disease.  He is the author of definitive chapters on diabetes and heart disease in Braunwald’s Heart Disease, William’s Textbook of Endocrinology and Joslin’s Diabetes.  He has served on numerous national and international consensus panels and advisory boards evaluating the diagnosis and treatment of cardiovascular disease in diabetes.  The AHA selected him to be the physician spokesperson for its national campaign “Heart of Diabetes” designed to increase awareness of diabetes as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease.