Lab Members

Harpriya Chugh, BE, has been working with data for over 25 years, and for the past 15 years, she has been managing and designing databases and processes for the Oregon Sudden Unexpected Death Study (SUDS) as well as the Ventura (PRESTO) study at the Center for Cardiac Arrest Prevention (CCAP).

Audrey Uy-Evanado, MD, is a cardiologist and project scientist at the CCAP at the Smidt Heart Institute. She leads the patient recruitment and phenotyping efforts for the Oregon Sudden Unexpected Death Study (SUDS).

Kotoka Nakamura, PhD, is a project scientist who earned her doctorate in biological chemistry from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Kotoka’s research focuses on the area of human genetics and the molecular basis of human diseases. As a molecular biologist and geneticist, she is currently leading projects to understand the molecular pathology of sudden cardiac arrest. She manages biobanks for over 3000 of our CCAP patients and utilizes these samples for various omics experiments to discover biomarkers and investigate the risk factors of sudden cardiac death.

Marita Knudsen Pope, MD, PhD, did her medical training at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, and has since worked as a resident physician in Norway. Alongside her clinical work, she earned a doctorate in cardiology from the Institute of Clinical Medicine at the University of Oslo. Her PhD research focused on the treatment and outcomes of patients with newly diagnosed atrial fibrillation utilizing data from the large, international GARFIELD-AF registry. She is currently a visiting postdoctoral scientist at Smidt Heart Institute, where her research is centered on prediction of sudden cardiac death.

Thien Tan Tri Tai Truyen, MD, is a cardiologist from Vietnam. He was trained in Global Clinical Scholars Research Training at Harvard Medical School. His research focuses on predicting sudden cardiac death and flow abnormalities in coronary artery disease.