Dr. Ioannis Doundoulakis

Dr Ioannis Doundoulakis is a cardiologist and cardiac electrophysiologist, currently serving as Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Health Sciences at the School of Life and Health Sciences, UNIC Athens. He combines academic teaching and research with full-time clinical practice at the Heart Rhythm Management Center, UZ Brussels, and as Clinical Scientific Collaborator at the First Department of Cardiology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. His work focuses on cardiac arrhythmias, atrial fibrillation, syncope, sudden cardiac death, catheter ablation (including pulsed field ablation) and biostatistics.

He obtained his MD from the Medical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (grade 8/10) and concurrently completed training at the Greek Military School of Combat Support Officers. He later earned an MSc in Medical Research Methodology at the same university (grade 9/10) and a PhD in Cardiology/Electrophysiology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2019–2022) on the role of the electrophysiologic study in unexplained syncope. He is currently pursuing a second doctoral thesis at Vrije Universiteit Brussel on the causes and prevention of sudden cardiac death, together with a postgraduate programme in Cardiac Electrophysiology and Pacing.

Clinically, Dr Doundoulakis trained as a cardiology resident in military and university hospitals in Greece and at UZ Brussels, followed by an electrophysiology and pacing fellowship at the Heart Rhythm Management Center. Since 2025 he has worked as a cardiologist/electrophysiologist in Brussels and Athens and as a paid clinical proctor for Abbott’s Volt pulsed field ablation system, providing hands-on training during atrial fibrillation ablation procedures.

His research output includes more than 140 peer-reviewed publications, with over 2,100 Google Scholar citations and an h-index of 24. He has first- or senior-author contributions in journals such as the Journal of the American Heart Association, Heart Rhythm, JACC Clinical Electrophysiology, Europace and Circulation. Major themes include unexplained syncope, Brugada syndrome and SCN5A risk, atrial fibrillation burden and ablation strategies, pulsed field ablation, and evidence synthesis (systematic reviews and network meta-analyses). He has secured competitive funding, including an investigator-initiated Pfizer study (PROTECT-AR; NCT03854149; budget €100,500) and research grants from the Hellenic Foundation of Cardiology, the Hellenic Society of Cardiology and UZ Brussels.

He is a Fellow of the European Heart Rhythm Association (FEHRA) and of ISHNE, and has served as EHRA Electrophysiologist National Ambassador. He completed an editorial training fellowship at the Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology (Springer Nature). He has received a Young Investigator Award (third place) at the 50th International Congress on Electrocardiology (2025) and best-submission awards of the Hellenic Society of Cardiology (2022, 2023). He co-organises the Hellenic Cardiology Congress of Drama, teaches undergraduates and residents, co-supervises one PhD and three MSc theses, and has authored textbook chapters on syncope and sudden cardiac death.

Dr Doundoulakis is a native Greek speaker and fluent in English. Outside medicine he enjoys tennis, running and cinema.