Rate My Professor David McManus

David D. McManus, MD’02, ScM’12, EMBA, is the Richard M. Haidack Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School, overseeing 16 divisions, more than 370 faculty members, and over $70 million in annual research funding. He also serves as founding director of the Program in Digital Medicine and director of the Atrial Fibrillation Treatment Program. A Brown University alumnus with a BS in Biological Sciences, he earned his MD and MS in Clinical Investigation from UMass Chan Medical School and an Executive MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management in 2025. Dr. McManus completed an internal medicine residency at the University of California, San Francisco, followed by cardiovascular medicine and clinical cardiac electrophysiology fellowships at UMass Chan. Previously, he was vice chair for clinical affairs in the Department of Medicine and director of Anticoagulation Services, where he implemented best practice advisories to improve anticoagulation guidelines. As principal investigator for the NIH’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) grant, he secured over $140 million to develop innovative testing strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic. Under his leadership as director of the Atrial Fibrillation Program, UMass Memorial Medical Center earned the American Heart Association’s Get with the Guidelines Gold Award. Recently appointed chancellor-elect of UMass Chan Medical School starting July 2026, he is the first alumnus to hold the position.

A practicing cardiologist and clinician-scientist, Dr. McManus specializes in leveraging digital health technologies, artificial intelligence, and wearable devices like smartwatches for early detection and management of atrial fibrillation and other cardiovascular diseases. His research encompasses epidemiology, genomics, and clinical outcomes of atrial fibrillation, as well as digital interventions for chronic conditions including COPD and stroke prevention. With over 400 peer-reviewed publications and more than 18,000 citations, notable works include “Sequencing of 53,831 diverse genomes from the NHLBI TOPMed Program” (Nature Genetics, 2021), “50 year trends in atrial fibrillation prevalence, incidence, risk factors, and mortality in the Framingham Heart Study” (Lancet, 2015), and “Detection of Atrial Fibrillation in a Large Population Using Wearable Devices: The Fitbit Heart Study” (Circulation, 2022). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Cardiovascular Digital Health Journal and has received the Boston Business Journal’s 2026 Innovator in Healthcare award and the Dr. Marcellette Williams Scholar award in 2018.