Steven Colan, M.D. ’77 – 2010 Distinguished Alumnus Award

Steven Colan is Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Chief for Clinical Operations, Department of Cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital.

A 1977 graduate of BUSM, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Philosophy from MIT. He completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship in cardiology at Boston Children’s Hospital. He is an accomplished clinician, researcher and teacher.

Dr. Colan’s primary research is on myocardial mechanics, including investigations of basic physiology, and the development and verification of new indices of ventricular and myocardial performance, and clinical studies of ventricular function in children with congenital and acquired heart disease.

This method of stress-strain analysis has been used in more than 200 published studies, and numerous multicenter NIH-funded clinical trials have employed the index as one of the primary clinical end-points.

Dr. Colan’s early work focused on the development of noninvasive methods for wide application in pediatric cardiology. He developed a noninvasive, load-independent assessment of contractility which has since become the reference standard in pediatric cardiology.

His clinical work includes caring for patients with ventricular function issues including cardiomyopathy.

He teaches myocardial mechanics and evaluation and care of patients with cardiomyopathy. Dr. Colan lectures on evaluation of systolic and diastolic function, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, echocardiography, and exercise physiology. He also trains cardiology fellows and visiting cardiologists in the echocardiography laboratory and hosts cardiologists who visit his laboratory to learn the methods of assessment of ventricular function pioneered at his institution.