Dr. Salim S. Hayek, MD is a cardiologist, physician‑scientist, and health‑system leader whose scientific focus is on understanding the role of inflammation as a link between cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic disease. He is Chair of Internal Medicine, Chief Transformation Officer, and tenured Professor of Medicine at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).

Dr. Hayek trained at Emory University, completing Internal Medicine residency and a Cardiology fellowship. He then joined the University of Michigan faculty, where he received tenure and served in several leadership roles including Medical Director of the Frankel Cardiovascular Center Clinics, Associate Director of Precision Health, and Director of the Research Development Core for the NIH George O’Brien Kidney Translational Resource Center.

Dr. Hayek has secured over 10 millions USD in research funding from diverse sources. He is PI on multiple NIH R01 awards and helps lead an NIH U54 Kidney Translational Center. His research addresses the cardiovascular–kidney–metabolic (CKM) syndrome at a systems level, positioning suPAR—a regulator of innate immune activity—as a unifying inflammatory node that links these conditions. At a high level, his work (i) established suPAR as a stable, cross‑disease risk signal (predicting CKD progression, adverse cardiovascular events, and AKI across populations); (ii) delivered convergent genetic and experimental evidence that suPAR is causal across the CKM axis; and (iii) is translating this biology into interventions that lower suPAR, with first‑in‑human approaches and Phase 1–2 clinical trials. He has authored 200+ publications with extensive invited lectureships nationally and internationally.

Honors include the ACC Douglas P. Zipes Distinguished Young Scientist Award, AHA Samuel A. Levine Early Career Investigator Award, Jerome W. Conn Award, Juanita L. Merchant Early Career Endowment Award, and Research Mentor of the Year (Michigan). He holds the Edward Randall Distinguished Chair in Internal Medicine at UTMB.