Ronald P. Karlsberg is an American academic and cardiologist. He is a clinical professor of medicine at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, specializing in clinical, preventive, and interventional cardiology.
Early life and education
Karlsberg was born in Syracuse, New York, to Eduard and Erna Karlsberg, German Jewish refugees who fled Nazi Germany in 1936 and settled in the United States via Buenos Aires.
Karlsberg received his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco, completed his residency at the University of Colorado Medical Center, and pursued a fellowship in cardiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and cardiovascular computed tomography.
Research and career
Karlsberg began his career as an academic at the University of California, Irvine, where he served as the director of cardiac wards and research at the Long Beach VA. He later joined the faculty at UCLA. His clinical and research work has focused on coronary artery disease.
Karlsberg developed an early web-based electronic health record system for cardiology practice, described in a 2008 profile in Cardiovascular Business. He teaches a continuing medical education course in coronary CT angiography.
Karlsberg has commented publicly on the clinical use of consumer and point-of-care cardiac monitoring technology. He has been an active member of the informatics committee of the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and has contributed to the development of national electronic record standards for cardiac outcomes. He has been on the Board of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT), establishing standards in that field. The ACC appointed him to the Intersociety Commission for the Accreditation of Computed Tomographic Laboratories (ICACTL).
He was a co-author of the 2009 Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography guidelines for the interpretation and reporting of coronary computed tomographic angiography, and an investigator in the multinational CONFIRM registry and the MERIT-HF trial. In 2024 he was named a Master of the Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (MSCCT). Among his publications was the first human case documenting statin-associated slowing of noncalcified coronary plaque in a patient with a calcium score of zero, measured by serial AI-assisted coronary CT angiography.
Karlsberg co-founded and serves as chairman of the organization now known as the National Institute for Cardiovascular Research and Innovation (niCVRI), previously the Cardiovascular Research Foundation of Southern California. niCVRI sponsors the SCCT niCVRI–Karlsberg Best Abstract Award, presented at the society's Annual Scientific Meeting.
His research interests focus on translational research in the areas of clinical cardiology, coronary CT angiography, medical imaging, health informatics, artificial intelligence, point-of-care medical monitoring, and multicenter medical research trials.
Karlsberg was appointed to the United States Preventive Services Task Force by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in September 2026.
Recognition Karlsberg was named one of America's Top Cardiologists by the Consumers' Research Council of America in 2006, and received the "Excellence in Teaching Award" from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Cardiology Department in 2011.
Selected publications
Karlsberg, R. P.; Cryer, P. E.; Roberts, R. (July 26, 1981). "Serial plasma catecholamine response early in the course of clinical acute myocardial infarction: relationship to infarct extent and mortality". American Heart Journal. 102 (1): 24–29. . .
References
External links Google Scholar