Specialization
Focus of research
Ahmad S. Amin was born in Herat (Afghanistan) in 1981 and moved to the Netherlands in 1993. After completing his secondary (pre-university) education at the Regionale Scholengemeenschap in Enkhuizen, he graduated cum laude in 2000. That same year, he began his medical studies at the University of Amsterdam. In March 2007, he obtained his M.D. degree cum laude, after which he was awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research on inherited cardiac diseases at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (USA). Upon his return to the Netherlands, he received a scholarship from the Graduate School of the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and pursued a Ph.D. at the Department of Experimental Cardiology. He obtained his Ph.D. degree cum laude in June 2012 from the University of Amsterdam with a thesis entitled "Modifiers of phenotype in inheritable arrhythmia syndromes."
He completed his training as a cardiologist in 2016 and has since been practicing at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers, with a clinical focus on inherited cardiac conditions. Since 2017, he has played a leading role in the coordination of the European Reference Network for rare cardiac diseases (ERN GUARD-Heart), which currently brings together 44 expert centers across Europe to improve the care for patients with rare and/or genetic heart conditions.
His research focuses on clinical and translational studies of inherited cardiac diseases associated with arrhythmias, heart failure, and sudden cardiac death, with a particular emphasis on genetic cardiomyopathies. The aim of his work is to improve understanding of the natural history of these conditions and to identify clinical and genetic factors that influence disease onset, progression, and response to therapy. Supported by a European Union grant, he has established an international collaboration with multiple European expert centers to investigate the risk of life-threatening arrhythmias in patients with mutations in the SCN5A gene. He also plays a leading role in high-impact genetic association studies on dilated cardiomyopathy. In addition, he has established a research infrastructure at the Amsterdam UMC for the automated extraction and storage of clinical data, as well as biobanking of DNA and bio-samples from patients with inherited cardiac diseases to support clinical and genetic research, proteomics, and artificial intelligence applications. This infrastructure has formed the foundation for numerous national and international research projects and publications, some of which he has led.
On behalf of Amsterdam UMC, he serves as the principal investigator in multiple international clinical trials in patients with dilated or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, including the first gene therapy trial in dilated cardiomyopathy. He is also involved in the design and setup of molecular and gene therapy studies for patients with cardiomyopathies.
Through this activities, he strives to provide high-quality care to patients with inherited cardiac diseases and to enable earlier diagnosis, personalized risk stratification, timely preventive interventions, and the development of novel therapies for patients with genetic cardiac diseases.