Carmen Milly Terzic MD, PhD

Dr. Terzic is Chair of the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, and serves as Associate Medical Director for Cardiovascular Rehabilitation at Mayo. Dr. Terzic attended the University Centro Occidental Lisandro Alvarado, where she earned her M.D. degree. She completed residency training at University Hospital in Barquisimeto, Venezuela, and a graduate fellowship with Inter-American Bank of Development and Venezuelan National Council of Research, Science and Technology. Transferring to Mayo Clinic, she earned her Ph.D. degree in Pharmacology at Mayo Graduate School, and then completed her M.Sci. degree in physiology and biophysics at Venezuelan National Institute for Research. Dr. Terzic also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Mayo’s Cardiovascular Research Laboratory, in addition to completing both an internship at Mayo’s Department of Internal Medicine and a residency in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation.

As a physician, Dr. Terzic specializes in cardiovascular rehabilitation and neuromuscular rehabilitation. As a scientist, her research is focused on developing regenerative medicine and stem cell-based cardiac repair and optimizes their properties for cardiac commitment, as well as studying the role of nuclear transport during stem cell differentiation into cardiomyocytes. These efforts include developing techniques by which direct injection of stem cells in a murine model of cardiac infarction may lead to the engraftment and repopulation of the diseased heart with cardiac cells derived from the stem cells.