Professor Shah is the British Heart Foundation (BHF) Professor of Cardiology; James Black Professor of Medicine; Director of the King’s BHF Centre of Research Excellence; and Hon. Consultant Cardiologist at King’s College Hospital. He is currently the Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine.
He trained in medicine and cardiology at the University of Wales, undertook doctoral research training in Wales and Belgium, and was a postdoctoral scientist at the National Institutes of Health in the USA in the early 1990s. Prior to his appointment to the Chair of Cardiology at KCL in 1998, he was a Medical Research Council Senior Clinical Fellow in Cardiff.
His main research interests are in the pathophysiology of heart failure. His group has undertaken seminal studies on how the hearts adapts to disease stresses, discovering enzymes called NADPH oxidases that have a protective role in the heart and working on nitric oxide which is a chemical signal in the body. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he has led a team focusing on working out how a patient’s ethnic background affects their risk of severe disease and death. He has published approximately 400 peer-reviewed papers and has an H index of 105.
Professor Shah is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, the International Society for Heart Research, the European Society of Cardiology, and the American Heart Association. He is Associate Editor of the American Journal of Physiology (Heart & Circulation), Consulting Editor for Cardiovascular Research, and on the Editorial Boards of Circulation and the European Heart Journal.