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. Gerula earned her Bachelor of Science in 1992 from New Jersey Institute of Technology majoring in Chemical Engineering, and her Medical Degree from Rutgers (formerly UMDNJ)- New Jersey Medical School in 1996. She completed her internship and residency training at New Jersey Medical School and remained at the institution to complete her cardiology fellowship in 2002.

Dr. Gerula joined the faculty of the Department of Medicine in 2002 and became an integral part of the cardiovascular teaching program in the medical school. She has received numerous teaching honors including the Golden Apple (voted on by students), and the prestigious UMDNJ Foundation "Excellence in Teaching" award. She was named Associate Program Director of the Cardiology Fellowship in 2007, and then appointed Program Director in 2012. She works as an attending on the inpatient wards and Echocardiography Lab at The University Hospital year-round, has a faculty practice at the Doctors Office Complex on campus, and serves as the Cardiology Consultant for the Orthotropic Liver Transplantation Service. She has also received multiple awards from Castle Connolly Top Doctors in New York Metro, NJ Magazine and New York Magazine.

She currently serves as the Course Director for the Cardiovascular Organ System Block for the first year medical school curriculum, where she has implemented a new Adult learning concepts and has expanded the use of simulation in both medical student education and in the Cardiology Fellowship training program. She previously served as Assistant Dean for Careers in Medicine at New Jersey Medical School in 2009 till 2015 overseeing the Career Advising Program for all NJMS students. She is currently a committee member for the Rutgers Health Graduate Medical Education Committee which oversees over 140 training programs and 1600 trainees.  She also chairs the Rutgers Health GME subcommittee on Resident and Faculty Development. This summer she was also appointed a member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and will be a member for 6 years for the Review Committee for Internal Medicine.  She is a member of the NJ-ACC and serves as the Chair for the subcommittee on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.