Catherine Otto is the J. Ward Kennedy-Hamilton Endowed Chair in Cardiology, Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington (UW) School Of Medicine in Seattle, Washington.   She served as Director of the Cardiology Fellowship Training Program for 20 years and currently is Director of the Heart Valve Clinic.  She has served as Editor-in-Chief of Heart, an international journal of cardiology, since 2014. She also has been a member of the Heart Valve Collaboratory Scientific Council since 2020.

Dr. Otto is recognized as an expert on calcific aortic valve disease. Dr. Otto’s research has transformed our understanding of this disease process, showing that it is an active disease process that may be amenable to medical therapy, rather than being an inevitable consequence of aging.  She received for the 2011 American College of Cardiology Distinguished Scientist Award (Clinical Domain) for this research. Dr. Otto has received numerous other awards including the 2008 UW School of Medicine Award for Excellence in Mentoring Women and Minorities, the 2013 Distinguished Alumni Award, the UW Medical Center 2011 Teamwork, Leadership and Caring Award, and the 2020 American Society of Echocardiography Lifetime Achievement Award.  She is a Fellow of the American Heart Association, American College of Cardiology and European Society of Cardiology.

In addition, Dr. Otto is the author of several cardiology books: The Textbook of Clinical Echocardiography (6^th Edition, 2018), The Practice of Clinical Echocardiography (6^th Edition, in press), Valvular Heart Disease (5^th  Edition, 2020,  co-edited by Robert O. Bonow, MD), Intraoperative Echocardiography and Interventional Echocardiography  (2^nd Edition, 2018, with Don Oxorn) and the Echocardiography Review Guide (4rd Edition with 3 co-authors).  She also is one of the Cardiology Editor-in-Chiefs for the online medical textbook Up-to-Date.