Kimberley Hemelrijk, Margriet Bogerd, Marion van Vugt and Oluwatomisono Akinrimisi have received work visit grants in the second grant round. They will visit a research
institute abroad to collaborate and learn new techniques. Congratulations to all!

Kimberley Hemelrijk
Mount Sinai, New York
Kimberley will join the team of Roxana Mehran, Chair
of the Lancet Commission on Women’s Cardiovascular Diseases and Founder of Women as One. Her project focuses on sex-specific outcomes in women undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). She aims to address the underrepresentation of women in cardiovascular research and the higher adverse event rates they experience post-PCI. Using Mount Sinai’s extensive PCI registry, Kimberly will evaluate adverse event rates and identify predictors of poor outcomes in female patients, contributing to improved risk stratification and treatment strategies.

Margriet Bogerd
King's College London
Margriet’s research focuses on cardiogenic shock
and mechanical circulatory support (MCS), with a particular emphasis on percutaneous ventricular assist devices (pLVAD) and VA-ECMO. During her research visit, she will be contributing to the final stages of the CHIP-BCIS3 randomized trial, which evaluates pLVAD in high-risk PCI. She will also work on the integration of national PCI and Intensive Care Registries into a comprehensive pan-UK Cardiogenic Shock Database. This large-scale resource will enable validation of the Amsterdam Copenhagen Cardiogenic Shock (ACCS) Score and support the advancement of personalized medicine through advanced machine learning techniques. The collaboration aims to enhance registry-based research and improve precision medicine for patients with cardiogenic shock.

Marion van Vugt

University College London

Marion will investigate the genetic basis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). In her research, she focuses on the combined impact of common, rare, and intermediate effect genetic variants (IEVs) on disease onset and severity. Using a deeply phenotyped HCM cohort from St Barts and validating findings in large-scale biobanks such as UK Biobank, Our Future Health, and All of Us, she aims to identify carriers of pathogenic variants and classify rare variants and IEVs. In these carriers, she will analyze the age-related disease penetrance and phenotypic severity, using measures such as left ventricular wall thickness, outflow tract obstruction, and progression to heart failure.

Oluwatomisono Akinrimisi
University of Britisch Columbia

With his project Oluwatomisono aims to investigate the role of methylglyoxal (MGO) and the gut microbiome in the development and progression of type 1 diabetes (T1D) using the non-obese diabetic (NOD) mouse model. By administering 1% MGO in drinking water, the study will assess the impact of elevated MGO on T1D pathogenesis, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity, and vascular function, with particular attention to the influence of the microbiome. This approach will help move from observational associations to establishing causality, providing new insights into how gut microbiota and MGO contribute to diabetic complications and vascular dysfunction.

ACS Work Visit Grant

The grant allows PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to receive training in new techniques (both preclinical and clinical) or to initiate collaboration with a research institute abroad. The next round will open in 2026. For more information, see the ACS Work Visit Grant page.