James Thomas, MD, is a staff cardiologist in the Robert and Suzanne Tomsich Department of Cardiovascular Medicine, at the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart & Vascular Institute at Cleveland Clinic. He is Lead Scientist for Ultrasound to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Dr. Thomas is board-certified as a Diplomate in the National Board of Medical Examiners, the American Board of Internal Medicine, and the Cardiovascular Subspecialty Board. His specialty interest is echocardiography.
He received his Bachelor's Degree in applied mathematics from Harvard College, graduating summa cum laude. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the national honor society. Following medical school at Harvard, Dr. Thomas completed his internship and residency in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, followed by a fellowship in cardiology from the University of Vermont College of Medicine where he was named Clinical Fellow in Medicine (Cardiology Unit). Massachusetts General Hospital granted him a research fellowship for further study. He was appointed to Cleveland Clinic in 1992.
Dr. Thomas has had many academic appointments including several posts at Harvard Medical School. He was Professor of Medicine of the Cleveland Clinic Health Sciences Center of the Ohio State University School of Medicine and is a Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University. In addition, he has been an invited visiting professor at numerous prestigious medical conferences around the world, including Japan, Korea, Thailand, India, Singapore, China, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Venezuela, and throughout Europe and the MIddle East.
Listed in Who's Who in Medicine and Healthcare beginning in 1997-1998, Dr. Thomas has been an invited lecturer to more than 1,000 international and national symposia, conferences, meetings and clinical training classes. He has conducted more than 100 research studies on ultrasound, ultrasonography, and digital echocardiography, among many other heart-related studies, which have been funded by grants from the American Heart Association, National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health, the American College of Cardiology and NASA, to name a few.
He is on the editorial board of such prestigious publications as Circulation, Circulation Research, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography and Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. He also serves as a peer reviewer for 21 professional journals.
Dr. Thomas has published more than 500 peer-viewed articles in professional journals, written seven books and contributed more than 100 book chapters to professional medical textbooks. He has published more than 700 abstracts.
He is a Fellow in the American College of Cardiology, the European Society of Cardiology and the Council on Clinical Cardiology of the American Heart Association. In addition, he is a member of the following professional societies: the American College of Physicians, American College of Cardiology, American Society of Echocardiography and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, among others.
In his free time, he enjoys cooking, skiing, scuba diving and what he calls "the occasional bungee jump."
