Prize Honors Rising Physicians Exemplifying the Highest Standards of Clinical and Academic Excellence in Interventional Cardiovascular Medicine
NEW YORK – February 24, 2026 – The Thomas J. Linnemeier Spirit of Interventional Cardiology Young Investigator Award was presented to Gennaro Giustino, MD, during Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics® (TCT®), the annual scientific symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation® (CRF®). TCT took place October 25-28, 2025, in San Francisco, California at the Moscone Center. Each year, the award is given to emerging investigators who demonstrate clinical and academic excellence in interventional cardiovascular medicine, and the winner also receives a $10,000 scholarship.
Dr. Giustino is a structural interventional cardiologist at Morristown Medical Center, part of the Atlantic Health System in Morristown, New Jersey. He has demonstrated a strong commitment to clinical innovation in interventional cardiovascular medicine. Dr. Giustino has authored more than 220 peer‑reviewed publications, has an H-index of 54 and more than 10,000 citations. Notably, his 2016 paper in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2016;68:1851–64) established the gold‑standard definition of complex percutaneous coronary intervention (Complex PCI). He has developed a smartphone-based bedside decision-support tool to guide management of cardiogenic shock (MCS‑Aid App) and more recently has secured a patent for a multifunctional, transseptal, steerable large‑bore sheath to provide mechanical cardiocirculatory support and delivery of structural heart therapies (U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/749,862).
Dr. Giustino completed three fellowships: a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine at The Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute, The Mount Sinai Hospital – Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, where he served as Chief Cardiovascular Fellow; a fellowship in interventional cardiology at the same institution; and a fellowship in structural heart disease and mechanical cardiocirculatory support at the Henry Ford Heart and Vascular Institute in Detroit, Michigan.
To qualify for Linnemeier Award, physicians must be younger than 40 years old and demonstrate a commitment to academic and research excellence through their early career achievements. Finalists for the award become faculty at TCT, and the winner is awarded a $10,000 scholarship as well as being honored on the TCT podium. In addition to Dr. Giustino, the finalists for this year’s award were Yousif Ahmad, MD, PhD; Francesco Costa, MD, PhD, MS; and Aakriti Gupta, MD, MSc.
Previous recipients of the Linnemeier Award include Robert Avram, MD; Alexander Craig Fanaroff, MD; Jaffar Khan, MD; Simone Biscaglia, MD; Jennifer Rymer, MD; Jolanta M. Siller-Matula, MD; Mohamad Adnan Alkhouli, MD; Jay Giri, MD; Philipp Christoph Bernhard Lurz, MD; Maurizio Taramasso, MD; Hiroki Shiomi, MD; Toby Rogers, MD; Marco Barbanti, MD; Vasim Farooq, MD; Philippe Généreux, MD; Robert W. Yeh, MD; Davide Capodanno, MD; Colin M. Barker, MD; Robert A. Byrne, MD; Mehdi H. Shishehbor, MD; Wojciech Wojakowski, MD; Alaide Chieffo, MD; Giuseppe De Luca, MD; Farouc Jaffer, MD; and David E. Kandzari, MD.
