Page 13 - CBAC Newsletter 2013

CBAC FACulty Spotlight

s I enter Dr. Jane Chen’s Office, I see her walls filled with colorful artwork. From the start, she is friendly and
energetic. With classical piano music playing in the background, she greets me and guides me over to her desk.
A I see photos of her sons and she says proudly, “There they are, that’s them!” Her young artists.

Dr. Chen moved with her family from Taiwan to Chicago, IL when she was ten years old. In the fifth grade, she recalls
quietly sitting in the back of the classroom and taking ESL courses with mainly Hispanic children who talked mainly
amongst each other. As a creative outlet, she continued her classical piano training.

CBAC: What upbringing and experiences inspired your career choice?

Although I was always interested in the medical field, being a physician was not my first choice of a profession. There
are no doctors in my family, so I didn’t have any particular role models or anyone I could turn to for advice. I was trained
as a classical pianist and wanted to pursue music as a career. I was inspired with stories I read as a child about Dr.
Albert Schweitzer, who was a physician by profession and played the organ as a hobby, so I thought that was a great
way to do both.

CBAC: How did you get into your area of specialization?

Going into medical school (here at Washington University) I thought I wanted to be a cardiothoracic surgeon, mainly
because I’ve always liked cardiac physiology and wanted to do something with my hands. As a fourth year medical
student, I worked in a research lab with Dr. Peter Corr. The exposure to his work involving ion channels sparked my
interest in electrophysiology. As an intern at Barnes [-Jewish] Hospital, I was impressed with Dr. Michael Cain and Dr.
Bruce Lindsay and how they can make an incredibly complicated mechanism of reentrant arrhythmia sound so logical.
I knew then that electrophysiology was the right field for me, and that I also wanted to help future students decipher
the complexity of the field.

CBAC: After successfully completing medical school, what path led you to where you are today?

After completing my residency in Internal Medicine, I went to Beth Israel Hospital in Boston for my cardiology fellowship.
This was followed by a fellowship in Electrophysiology at the Beth Israel Hospital under the direction of my mentor, Dr.
Mark Josephson. After fellowship, I was offered a faculty position here at Washington University, and I have been here
since 2000. I have been the director of the Electrophysiology Fellowship Program since 2007.

CBAC: What are some of the research-related activities you have worked on since being at Washington
University?

I am predominantly a clinical electrophysiologist, and most of my research has a direct link to patient care. I have
participated as an institutional principal investigator for multicenter post market research trials for implantable devic-
es. I have published studies on the use of magnetic steerable systems for ablation of tachycardias. More recently, I
have worked with engineers from Medtronic Inc. [where Washington University is one of the study sites] on the develop-
ment of a universal antitachycardia pacing algorithm for treatment of ventricular tachycardias. I am currently working
on a project looking at metabolic profiles of patients with ventricular arrhythmias and defibrillators to determine if there
are any dynamic metabolic signatures that may predict events and hospitalizations.

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