Cardiovascular Medicine Fellowship Program
Program Director's Welcome

Christine M. Gerula, MD

Welcome to Rutgers New Jersey Medical School Cardiovascular Fellowship Program!

We are exceptionally proud of the quality of our fellowship program and the long term success our graduates have achieved.  Please peruse our newly updated website filled with key information.

We have a robust faculty across four campuses that enjoy bedside teaching and close fellow-faculty interactions. The foundation of our training program is a collegial faculty fellow working relationship that supports "supervised autonomy".

We have actively sought to recruit a diverse house staff in helping to care for the extraordinarily diverse patient populations at our four hospitals - The University Hospital, Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center, Jersey City Medical Center, and the East Orange VA. With no other university medical center in Northern New Jersey, the fellows experience unmatched diversity with respect to patient illness and disease presentations.

I strongly urge you to consider Rutgers New Jersey Medical School as a place to acquire superb training in a nurturing and comfortable environment. We will develop you into a confident, humanistic, and knowledgeable Cardiologist prepared for clinical practice, further sub specialization, or academic medicine. Our goal is to train the cardiologist’s cardiologist. We welcome the opportunity to meet you and show you our state-of-the-art facilities!

Christine M. Gerula, MD, FACC

Program Director, Cardiovascular Fellowship
Professor of Medicine

Dr. Christine Gerula earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in 1992 and her Doctor of Medicine degree from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (formerly UMDNJ) in 1996. She completed her internship and residency in Internal Medicine at New Jersey Medical School and subsequently remained at the institution to complete her Cardiovascular Disease fellowship in 2002.

Following her fellowship, Dr. Gerula joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine, where she became an integral contributor to the cardiovascular teaching program. She has received numerous accolades for her teaching excellence, including the Golden Apple Award, voted on by medical students, and the prestigious UMDNJ Foundation Excellence in Teaching Award.

In 2007, Dr. Gerula was appointed Associate Program Director of the Cardiology Fellowship and was promoted to Program Director in 2012. She serves as an attending physician on the inpatient cardiology service and in the Echocardiography Laboratory at The University Hospital, maintains a faculty practice at the Ambulatory Care Center, and acts as the Cardiology Consultant for the Orthotopic Liver Transplantation Service. Her clinical excellence has been recognized repeatedly with honors from Castle Connolly Top Doctors, New Jersey Monthly, and New York Magazine.

Dr. Gerula currently serves as Course Director for the Cardiovascular Organ System Block in the first-year medical school curriculum, where she has integrated adult learning principles and expanded the use of simulation-based education for both medical students and cardiology fellows. From 2009 to 2015, she served as Assistant Dean for Careers in Medicine, overseeing the career advising program for all NJMS students.

In addition to her program leadership roles, Dr. Gerula is an active member of the Rutgers Health Graduate Medical Education Committee, which oversees more than 140 training programs and 1,600 trainees, and chairs its Subcommittee on Training and Development. In 2023, she was appointed to the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) Review Committee for Internal Medicine, where she will serve a six-year term. Nationally, she contributes to the American College of Cardiology as a member of the Program Director and Graduate Medical Education Section Leadership Council.