Sumeet Chugh’s scientific career has been dedicated to understanding the etiology and mechanisms of sudden cardiac death in the community, with the goal of improving prediction and prevention. For this purpose he has founded two real-time population cohorts in the western US, in a catchment population of 1.5 million. The Oregon Sudden Unexpected Death Study (Oregon SUDS) and the Ventura PREdiction of Sudden death in mulTi-ethnic cOmmunities study (Ventura PRESTO), bring together all regional hospitals, emergency medical systems and the medical examiner network to build a unique data repository of phenotyped patients linked to a biobank. Ongoing since 2002, this approach has helped to set the standard for population science approaches to out of hospital sudden cardiac arrest. The mechanisms as well as clinical, plasma and genomic biomarkers his team continues to identify are being explored as tools to enhance prediction and prevention of sudden cardiac death. Today, the Center for Cardiac Arrest Prevention at the Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute in Los Angeles, which he directs, continues to mentor and collaborate with researchers with an interest in investigation of sudden cardiac death. Chugh has led an independently and continuously funded research program since 2001, and has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in the fields of cardiac electrophysiology and sudden cardiac death. Currently he is the Pauline and Harold Price Professor of Cardiac Electrophysiology, Medical Director of the Heart Rhythm Center and Associate Director of the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai Los Angeles; and Professor of Medicine-in-Residence at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine.