Dr. Shivkumar is a physician-scientist and Distinguished Professor of Medicine (Cardiology), Radiology, and Bioengineering at UCLA. He specializes in interventional cardiac electrophysiology, with a clinical focus on delivering state-of-the-art clinical care and developing innovative non-pharmacologic therapies for cardiac arrhythmias and related cardiac disorders, including epicardial ablation and neuromodulation. His research centers on the mechanisms of human cardiac arrhythmias, particularly the role of the autonomic nervous system, and extends beyond a single-organ framework to inform the broader field of neurovisceral science.

In 2014, he founded the UCLA Neurocardiology Research Program of Excellence as the dedicated research arm of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center. He and his colleagues lead human mechanistic studies and develop novel intellectual property and medical technologies for cardiovascular therapeutics, some of which have been incorporated into FDA-approved devices now in clinical use. His work has been supported by the NIH since 2006, as well as by the American Heart Association, the Doris Duke Foundation, and private philanthropy. He previously directed a 15-university NIH-funded consortium (NIH-SPARC) on the neural control of the heart. At present, he leads both an NIH Program Project Grant on arrhythmia mechanisms and an international Leducq Foundation consortium grant.

Dr. Shivkumar serves on the editorial boards of several cardiology and electrophysiology journals, reviews for leading basic and clinical science journals, and participates in NIH peer review in cardiac arrhythmia and neuroscience research. He served as the inaugural director of the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center and EP Programs from 2002 to 2025, and has been appointed to the American Board of Internal Medicine’s Board of Examiners in Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, an honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians (London). He served as the President of the International Society for Autonomic Neuroscience (from 2019-2022). He is also an elected member of both the Association of American Physicians (AAP) and the Association of University Cardiologists (AUC). In 2020, he was named Editor-in-Chief of JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology. He has mentored several PhD trainees, received multiple teaching awards, and founded the Amara-Yad Project, an open-access medical education knowledge portal.

https://www.uclahealth.org/medical-services/heart/arrhythmia/about-us/amara-yad-project