2026 Laennec Clinician/Educator Lecturer – C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FAHA

C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, FAHA

Smidt Heart Institute
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Los Angeles, California

C. Noel Bairey Merz, MD, MACC, FAHA, FESC, is director of the Barbra Streisand Women's Heart Center, the Linda Joy Pollin Women’s Heart Health Program, the Erika J. Glazer Women’s Heart Research Initiative and the Preventive Cardiac Center at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai. She also is professor of medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Her research interests include ischemic heart disease, women and cardiovascular disease, mental stress and heart disease, the role of exercise and stress management in reversing disease, the role of cholesterol and nutrition management in heart disease, takotsubo syndrome, adverse pregnancy outcomes and cardiovascular disease, and precision medicine monitoring to predict unexpected cardiovascular events.

Bairey Merz is chair of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-sponsored WISE (Women's Ischemic Syndrome Evaluation) initiative, which is investigating potential methods for more effective diagnosis and evaluation of ischemic heart disease in women. Bairey Merz has received investigational grants from the NHLBI, the National Center for Alternative and Complementary Medicine, the National Institute on Aging, the Flight Attendant Medical Research Institute, the Pfeiffer Foundation, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation, The Streisand Foundation, the Erika J. Glazer Women’s Heart Research Initiative, the Society for Women’s Health Research, the Linda Joy Pollin Women’s Heart Health Program, and the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program of the Department of Defense.

She has an extensive record of over 450 scientific publications and book chapters, and more than 400 abstracts. Her work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Circulation, the Journal of the American College of Cardiology and the Journal of Women's Health.

Bairey Merz received her bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago and her medical degree from Harvard University. She completed her residency at the University of California, San Francisco, where she served as chief medical resident. Bairey Merz also completed fellowships in clinical cardiology and nuclear cardiology and served as chief cardiology fellow at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

She has appeared frequently in the media as an authority on heart disease. Her television appearances have included “60 Minutes,” NBC’s “TODAY” show, “The Dr. Oz Show,” “Good Morning America,” “Dateline NBC” and “20/20.” She has also been interviewed for articles published in The New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, U.S. News & World Report and Working Woman magazine, to name a few.