Vanessa Ferreira, MD, PhD FSCMR

University of Oxford – Oxford, UK

Dr. Ferreira is Professor of Medicine and cardiologist at the University of Oxford, and is a world-leading clinical expert, researcher, and educator in the field of CMR. She took her Bachelor of Science (SB) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, USA), Doctor of Medicine (MD) at the University of British Columbia (Canada), and cardiology fellowship at the University of Calgary (Canada), before obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil/PhD) degree in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford, which focused on CMR quantitative myocardial tissue characterization.

In her role as Deputy Clinical Director of the Oxford Centre for Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research (OCMR), she is an extremely experienced CMR clinician, and her clinical opinion is frequently sought locally, nationally, and internationally. She is one of the world leaders in CMR research, and is one of the main pioneers of cardiac tissue characterization using parametric mapping. She has authored many of the ground-breaking papers of the field, and has won numerous awards for her work. Vanessa shines as an educator, as attested to by many invited lectures on CMR to scientific conferences, having won the inaugural SCMR Education Award (2023), and she is an inspirational leader for her trainees.

Finally, Professor Ferreira’s contributions to the SCMR have been enormous over many years, including serving on: the SCMR Board of Trustees (2016-2019), CMR Board Exam Review Course (First Chair), SCMR COVID-19 Task Force, Mapping Special Interest Group (Past Chair), Scientific Program Committee, Clinical Trials Committee, SCMR Outreach, SCMR Global Strategy Task Force, and the Women-in-CMR interest group, to name a few. She is first-author on the SCMR COVID-19 expert recommendations (2022), the JACC Expert Consensus Statement on using CMR for detecting myocardial inflammation “Updated Lake Louise Criteria” (2018), and co-authored the SCMR Mapping Expert Consensus Statement (2017), the 2024 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway on Strategies and Criteria for the Diagnosis and Management of Myocarditis, and the 2025 ESC Guidelines of Myocarditis and Pericarditis, amongst other international guidelines and consensus papers. She is a frequent source of scientific advice internationally on the topic of CMR and quantitative mapping, and is active in world-wide collaborations. She is enthusiastic to continue to serve SCMR as its President (2026-2027), to further its mission, and to promote CMR worldwide.

Of Portuguese/Macanese descent, Dr Ferreira was born in Hong Kong, and is also fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin.