Research Teams

Harpriya Chugh, BE, has been working with data for over 25 years and at the CCAP for the past 13 years managing and designing databases and processes for the Oregon Sudden Unexpected Death Study (SUDS) as well as the Ventura (PRESTO) study.

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

Ronald Mariani, EMT-P, is a retired fire paramedic and captain in the Portland Fire Bureau and functions as a liaison to the collaborating emergency medical services agencies and the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office.

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.

Kotoka Nakamura, PhD, is a project scientist who earned her doctorate in biological chemistry from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. The focus of her research covers the area of human genetics and the molecular basis of human diseases. As a molecular biologist and geneticist, Dr. Nakamura 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 to investigate the risk factors of sudden cardiac death.

Arayik Sargsyan, MD, MPH, obtained his master’s degree in public health from the American University of Armenia (affiliated with Johns Hopkins University) and is a foreign MD with international experience in hospitals in Vienna and Salzburg and clinical research centers in Warsaw, Stockholm and Vienna.